When Microsoft released Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows XP, one of the key incentives it gave for people to install it was its enhanced security. However, it also represented a major upgrade to the operating system and many IT managers have had concerns over the possibility that installing SP2 might cause some of their applications to behave unpredictably. This has led to a large number of companies delaying the roll-out of SP2, even though this means missing out on the security and other improvements it brings.
Computacenter has launched its Application Impact Assessment for SP2 service to address the concerns of IT managers. This is a particularly pressing issue now that Microsoft will only support implementations of Windows XP that have SP2 in place.
“The problem with SP2 is that it’s not a simple patch, as people are used to thinking of them, it is a functional change,” says Adrian Foxall, head of Computacenter’s Integration Centre. “Our customers have gone through the project planning and testing needed to migrate to XP and may be daunted by the idea of doing that again with SP2. A lot of the feedback we’ve had is that they can’t go back to their board and say ‘I need additional budget to test all the applications again’ when they’ve only just moved to XP.”
The Assessment Impact service takes a customer’s applications and runs them against a database created by Computacenter and its partners. This system is built on extensive knowledge in application compatibility testing, and also on Computacenter’s experience in rolling out SP2 for a broad range of customers and with a huge variety of applications.
The result of the exercise is a report detailing where the customer is likely to encounter problems with SP2 – details that are specific to their own environment.
“It gives them a clear understanding of which applications will perform without problems, which ones will present some problems that may require minimal work to make them function and which will need serious attention,” says Foxall. “This helps the customer prioritise where to spend the system admin effort because we’ll tell them how the applications will behave and what the problems will be.”
Rather than test every application, the report allows an organisation to decide where to apply its limited resources. It might decide, for example, that some problematic applications can be ignored for the time being if their importance to the business is relatively low. The service also significantly lowers the risk of business-critical applications failing.
“All customers recognise that it’s essential to move to SP2 to get the best out of Windows XP – to achieve lower support costs and realise the additional functionality,” says Foxall. “This service allows them to do that with the least possible impact and the best understanding of the issues.”
