With the official launch of Desktop App Assure, Microsoft promises to help users make applications compatible with the latest versions of Windows 10 and Office 365. With that guarantee, the software giant hopes to convince the last people to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10.
Compatibility is one of the biggest concerns when migrating from an old version of Windows to a new one, Microsoft thinks. However, now that the official support for Windows 7 has entered its final year, it is becoming increasingly important for many people. Microsoft is committed to ensuring that every application running on Windows 7 will also work on Windows 10. In Redmond, however, they realize that the consequences of a compatibility problem are great, and that a 100% guarantee is difficult.
The Desktop App Assure program brings relief. Microsoft announced it on Ignite last year, and officially rolled it out this week. The program gives Enterprise and Education customers access to a team of compatibility experts. There administrators can knock on the door with software that they suspect will cause a problem despite everything.
Microsoft takes responsibility
The team of experts will analyze the app, and assist the end user if there is a problem. The Desktop App Assure program goes way beyond that. Sometimes Microsoft will customize Windows to solve the problem, but sometimes this is not possible. In that case, the experts will debug the app in question themselves, and pass on the solution to the problem to the administrators. Even that is of course not always possible. If the affected app was developed by a third party, Microsoft therefore undertakes to contact the softwarevendor and encourage them to implement the correct solution.
The Desktop App Assure program has to be some kind of insurance. Microsoft guarantees everyone that almost everything running on Windows 7 is also running on Windows 10, and personally commits to solving any problems that may arise in the exceptional cases in which this claim does not appear to be entirely correct.
Exceptional problems
How exceptional, team Windows has figures of that. In a pilot phase, the compatibility team looked at 41,000 applications. Of these, exactly 49, or barely 0.1 percent, were found to have a compatibility problem. Microsoft is happy to use these figures to show that switching to Windows 10 is a safe option. The Desktop App Assure program is also applicable if updates of Windows 10 itself are at some point a problem.
The program shows how confident Microsoft is in its claims. It is certain that it will only have to support a handful of applications personally, as such a guarantee would simply not be possible with major compatibility problems.
Just in time
Microsoft’s push comes at a convenient time. Although official support for Windows 7 ends next year, the operating system is still the second most popular in the world. According to Netmarketshare figures, 36.9 percent of desktop systems worldwide still run on the now old but immensely popular OS. Windows 10 is only marginally more popular, at 39.22 percent.
Desktop App Assure is available for Windows 10 Enterprise and Education licenses. If you want to make use of the service, you must contact the Microsoft Fasttrack team.
Related: Microsoft unplugs Windows 7 within one year
This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.