Streamlining Application Delivery on Multiple Platforms

How many applications do your employees use on a day-to-day basis? If you’re anything like the average organization, Statista estimates that number comes out to approximately 80 unique apps — a 900% increase in just five years. As more employees begin to utilize their personal laptops, cellphones and laptops for work purposes, it’s expected that the use of multiple pieces of software will only continue to grow. 

Whether they’re for communications, security purposes or administrative functions, each of these applications represent a potential security vulnerability if installation isn’t done correctly or the program isn’t kept up to date. The challenge your company will need to overcome is that overseeing the deployment of each piece of software on employees’ individual devices can quickly become a task that takes over all of your IT teams’ time. This is especially true if your workforce is entirely or primarily remote. 

Creating a plan to streamline the delivery process and automating processes where possible will help organizations to successfully update technologies without the risk of creating additional security vulnerabilities or malfunctioning devices.

Best practices for application management 

Achieving maximized visibility and efficiency are the two biggest goals when it comes to optimizing the application delivery process. As your organization grows, the digital asset environment that your IT manager oversees will only continue to expand with new endpoints and potential security vulnerabilities.

Although new technology will play a major role in achieving streamlined application management, your team will need to adopt a more comprehensive approach when it comes to the way they view the installation process. Insights for Professionals has outlined some important considerations to help IT managers get a better grasp on updating systems as quickly  — and easily — as possible:

• Taking a more agile route: The instant the term was coined, agile became a bit of an industry-wide buzzword. While you’ve likely heard all about the idea of taking an iterative  and collaborative approach to project management and software development, it does hold a valuable lesson for IT managers trying to streamline application delivery.
  By working with the entire organization to identify bottlenecks when it comes to software installation and updates, your team can find and address the pain points that are slowing you down the most.
• Focus on continuous delivery: Patches and upgrades are released on a near daily basis and IT managers need a way to install each without disrupting operations. To achieve this, companies should embrace automation to manage the app deployment process, as manual solutions are likely to reduce the speed of delivery and increase the risk of missing an update or improperly installing it. 
• Create clear policies: Poor planning and unclear processes and requirements are some of the leading culprits behind delays. It’s essential that IT teams create a clear workflow that spells out exactly what is expected of each stakeholder at every stage of the application delivery process. 
• Monitor updates with real-time accuracy: Your IT manager should be able to access a complete status report of every device within your network in real time. If records of software updates are reported manually on siloed documents and Excel sheets, efforts can become duplicated and updates are more likely to be missed.

When application delivery is streamlined, organizations can easily implement updates and patches with little to no difficulty, ensuring complete workstation availability and minimal downtime.

Leveraging a software delivery solution

For today’s organizations, streamlined application delivery isn’t a “set it and forget it” initiative. Testing, configuring and implementing new technologies are all critical and continuous processes that require close attention. However, these time-consuming tasks can quickly fall by the wayside for IT managers who are already under significant strain.  

At Faronics, our Deep Freeze Cloud solution will help your team revolutionize software deployment, automate maintenance and keep all of your apps up to date.

Your IT manager can set a date, time or repeated frequency for software deployment and updates with pre-scheduled maintenance options, enabling rapid installation without any need for manual intervention. And, by managing and tracking software usage through detailed reports, interactive widgets and user-friendly asset management tools, you can rest assured that your organization is compliant with any licensing agreements.

Faronics Deploy offers your team another way to seamlessly monitor, deploy or uninstall applications instantaneously. Take advantage of features including built-in applications, customizable apps and smart deployment to optimize bandwidth and upgrade with ease.

With Deep Freeze Cloud and Faronics Deploy, your team can easily create software installation packages with multiple installers and manage all deployment tasks from a holistic, cloud-based console.

If you’re ready to innovate your application delivery processes and capture new efficiencies across your organization, contact our team today.