Following a leak in February that hinted at App-V’s inclusion in Windows 10 “Redstone,” Microsoft has confirmed that feature will be available with the Anniversary Update, requiring no additional download or deployment.
The tools give companies the ability make applications available to end users without installing them directly on their computers, ensuring that there is no conflict with other software.
Solution Asset Program Manager J.C. Hornbeck stated in a blog post yesterday:
“With the upcoming Windows 10 Anniversary Update, we’re reducing the effort of deploying two of the most popular components of MDOP – Application Virtualization (App-V) and User Environment Virtualization (UE-V) — by including them in the Windows Enterprise and Education editions instead of requiring a separate download and deployment. “
The announcement came with a caveat for Windows Professional users. However, as Hornbeck points out, “If your organization is currently running App-V or UE-V on Windows 10 Professional or earlier and plan to upgrade to the Windows 10 Anniversary release, you will need to deploy the Enterprise edition to use App-V and UE-V on those devices.”
Updates
Future updates to App-V and UE-V will also be delivered as part of general Windows updates and won’t require any extra steps. The functionality will not change, the update shipping with the current “out-of-box” versions.
Hornbeck warns that “future enhancements to App-F and UE-V will only be available for the Windows 10 Anniversary Update or later.” This means that if you aren’t running Windows 10 Education or Enterprise, you will not receive any future updates to the software.The current App-V Management server will not ship with the Anniversary Update, nor will Windows Server 2016.
If you would like to learn more about the other additions in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update you can read our extensive coverage here and here.
