Whenever there's a great demand for a specific set of skills sooner or later off shoring comes into the picture. I expected this to be no different for application virtualization. It turned out to be true. I actually found via a Google ad that Google found fit to display on Thincomputing.net. It referred me to a company called VirtualAppFactory.com. They provide services to help you create virtual applications. 

In English: they sequence your applications for a fixed price. Especially the "fixed" in price would appeal to me if I was managing an application virtualization project. One of the biggest pitfalls I've experienced in big application virtualization project is the time that people think it takes to virtualize an application. I've seen people use estimates of 4 hours per application. Although this is very tempting when you look at virtualizing Acrobat Reader (which is actually better of being installed but that is a whole different story) it doesn't make for a real-life average.  It's not realistic because it's not the Acrobat Readers of this world that are the proverbial nail on your virtual coffin but it's that o-so-important-non-documented-ten-year-old-non-supported-created-by-a-company-that-does-not-exist-anymore application. 

So why go to all that trouble yourself? Why not just pay someone else to take care of all of that nastiness? This is probably something that the VirtualAppFactory founders must have been thinking. It seems too obvious to me though. It's kind of like outsourcing your IT support. It sounds great in theory but in practise it just doesn't work out. So, I was curious how such a "offshore sequencing process" would look like, so I contacted VirtualAppFactory and talked to them about this. They offer some interesting insights into how they deal with these of projects. There's difficult stuff to deal with and questions to answer like for example: how do you define an application? When do you declare an application "working"?

I talked to Dan Ogilvie Managing Director of VirtualAppFactory.com:

• How do you guys deal with projects when you sequence applications for customers?
  Whilst we are perfectly placed to assist companies from the very beginning of their entry into the unique world of Application Virtualization, in most cases by the time a project gets to us the proof of concept and pilot is complete. A company will approach Virtual App Factory (VAF) to get the bulk of their applications sequenced to a high standard for a fixed price. There will usually be an initial batch of applications for the roll out and then VAF will offer an ongoing service agreement where we will upgrade, patch or maintain the applications over time.
  
  

• How large are these projects?
  They can be just about any size, our people have worked on projects for just a few apps to several hundred.
  
  

• What is a typical price per sequence?
  It is very difficult to give you a price as our customers pay different amounts depending on the engagement, the size of the project , the extent of work they want us to do and the timeframe they want the work doing in. For example some customers just want us to turn some media into a sequence, others want us to own the application through to sign off (including fault fixes etc).  Our tailored service may be charged per app, per project and/or and per year dependant entirely on the customer’s requirements, all factors affect the cost charged.  However completely understanding that you would like a cost to consider and position in your mind, a typical starting point might be around £400 / €500 / $700  per application.
  
  

• What are the conditions to sequencing for customers?
  We have a set of “rules” which are laid out to make the process as easy as possible for both parties. This is definitely a two way process as we have the SoftGrid expertise and the customer knows their applications.  These rules do things as define “what is an application?”, they lay out what we will need from the customer and what they will expect back from us. Again we try to be flexible with these as everyone has differing capabilities, resources and expectations.

• Do you agree to any SLA’s with your customers? What are they about?
  The SLA will typically set out the time taken to turn a package round. This is agreed with the customer before an engagement is entered into in order  to set realistic expectations to suit both parties. The customer must  gather together relevant media and install guides this can often take some time and we have to schedule our team to fulfil the project. We also talk about warranty periods and fault fixes etc.

• So how do you “define an application”?
  As you know, impossible to do, but this is our best effort. We try and have a sensible approach with our customers and those applications which fall in to grey areas are discussed individually. An “Application” is defined as an installation according to the discovery document or installation instructions provided.
  
  An application may consist of several components, client plus middleware for example, but as long as it is one install routine, we will class this as one application. A “configuration” is defined as the creation or configuration of an extra OSD (or shortcut) for the application. So, if we were to sequence Microsoft Office, even though this consists of Word, Excel etc, we would see this as one application as no additional process.
  
  However, if an application requires us to create additional OSD (shortcuts) which are not standard to the installation, then we would see each of these as an additional configuration which will be charged accordingly. An example of this may be to create a version of an Oracle application that connects to a development environment costs around £80 per OSD. As always, this is discussed as part of the customer requirements capture to ensure that everyone is in agreement from the beginning.
  
  

• In my opinion one of the most valuable lessons to be learned in application virtualization projects is that is very hard for the person performing the sequencing to determine whether or not the application is working OK (functional testing). How do you deal with this?
  For this I really refer back to what I said in the pricing section – it depends on the customers’ needs. We have used a number of approaches;

1)      One or more of our guys (from add3) on site to act as the interface between onsite and offsite and performing the testing

2)      Using remote access to test the application in the customers environment ourselves,

3)      Best Efforts – sometimes no test information is supplied (usually off-the-shelf apps) and in these cases we use experience to test to “best efforts” levels.

4)      Following a customer’s test script in our labs. This tends to be only appropriate to applications without major backend infrastructure     (e.g. web/off the shelf apps) but we have replicated some customers’ databases etc to extend our testing capabilities.

• What do you experience to be the pitfalls in "off shoring sequencing"?
  Our experience has shown that working closely with the customer and ensuring that they understand that they have a commitment to this process is key. We have a SoftGrid “white list” of approx 1200 applications, but each company uses them in a different way, so even though we have sequenced the application before it will always need to be configured in some way to suit the specific environment – only the customer knows this information so we have to keep in close contact.
  
  We have also found that a good number of applications require connection to a back end, certainly to test, but sometimes during monitoring too. To get around this issue we offer a remote sequencing service where we will connect to a sequencing machine on the customer site and perform the sequencing here.
  
  Another issue can be time zones, we are winning an increasing amount of business overseas, especially in the United States. We work with our customers to establish clear communication channels and SLA’s to soften the blow of large time differences.
  
  In some cases for larger project we will use our sister company add3 to provide an onsite resource to act as the link between the offsite sequencing and the customers environment. This smooth’s the process as it takes the onus off the customer to publish sequenced applications and do first up testing.
  
  

• Thinstall has gotten a lot more attention since it's acquisition by VMware. Did you notice this? How do you view the different solutions (Thinstall, Softgrid, Citrix Application Streaming)?
  We have been working with Thinstall for some time now, but are particularly excited about the progress being made recently; the purchase by VMWare should be another step in the right direction and help the product to develop even further. It will be particularly interesting to see how the new ‘Application Link’ and ‘Application Sync’ features are implemented as these could make it much more competitive with SoftGrid on a feature-by-feature basis.
  
  As for the different solutions, we are independent and open minded about all of them; we are not tied to any in particular and don’t see any as a one-size-fits-all solution – each customer/project has their own specific requirements which are best addressed by different technologies or products. We don’t sell any licenses and as a result are free to help our customers choose on a “best-fit” basis rather than which makes us the most commission!
  
  To date we have see by far the greatest interest in SoftGrid, especially since the Microsoft acquisition but we have worked with Citrix Streaming and in particular we are seeing fast rising interest in Thinstall. We are also keeping our hands in with SVS and Xenocode [ Tc.net: I never heard of this one] to make sure we are fully informed of the latest developments in the industry.