Alkane are the preferred Application Packaging supplier to a large IT service provider.

At Alkane, we pride ourselves on being recognised as industry leaders in the application packaging space. Our reputation has been built over many years of advising the wider IT community on public forums, demonstrating best practices, consulting for government bodies, banks, councils, NHS Trusts, and information security companies – all while delivering cost-effective and reliable solutions.

This expertise and credibility led to Alkane being selected as the preferred application packaging supplier to one of the world’s leading global IT service providers.

Why Alkane?

Our partner required a trusted supplier who could:

• Deliver application packaging at scale with predictable cost models.
• Provide security-cleared professionals for sensitive accounts.
• Support a wide range of packaging technologies and modern deployment platforms.
• Maintain high quality standards with robust SLAs and long-term support.

Alkane’s fixed-price application packaging service gave the service provider the transparency and accuracy they needed for cost forecasting. Engagement is simple – packages are scoped, priced, and delivered without hidden surprises.

Flexibility and Scale

One of the key reasons for choosing Alkane was the ability to scale our services instantaneously.

• Our SC-cleared packaging professionals can be deployed to secure accounts without delay.
• Capacity can be flexed up or down depending on project demand, ensuring efficiency for our partner.

This agility allows the IT service provider to respond quickly to client demands while knowing they have a reliable partner to lean on.

Services Delivered

We provide our partner with a full suite of application packaging and consultancy services, including:

• Application Packaging – MSI, PSADT, App-V, MSIX and more.
• Modern Endpoint Management (MEM) consultancy – Intune, Configuration Manager.
• Third-party tooling – guidance and integration of platforms such as Recast Application Workspace.

With expertise spanning traditional and modern packaging formats, Alkane ensures every application is delivered in the most effective format for deployment, compatibility, and lifecycle management.

Quality and Assurance

We back our services with aggressive SLAs and a 12-month warranty on all our work. This commitment gives our partner confidence that every package we deliver is not only production-ready but also supported well beyond initial deployment.

Outcome

By partnering with Alkane, the IT service provider gained:

• Predictable and transparent pricing for all packaging work.
• Huge cost savings for their accounts.
• The ability to scale application packaging capacity instantly.
• Access to SC-cleared professionals for secure environments.
• A trusted partner with deep expertise across packaging technologies and MEM platforms.

In this case study, we walk through some of the challenges we faced and the strategy we used to successfully deliver a Windows 11 and Microsoft 365 migration for a local council.

Challenges

• We needed to perform in-place upgrades from Windows 10 to Windows 11 for ~3000 devices over the corporate (predominantly wireless) network and VPN, ensuring that we didn’t disrupt day-to-day business operations and maintained network performance.
• We needed to identify hardware and software that didn’t support Windows 11.
• The council utilised applications that were heavily-reliant on Microsoft Excel macros, integrated with Microsoft Outlook, used legacy Microsoft Access forms and COM automation. Coupled with transitioning from a 32-bit instance of Microsoft Office to a 64-bit instance of Microsoft 365, many business-critical applications were failing to work.
• We needed to identify all critical business applications and prioritise testing and remediation of these applications prior to commencing the rollout.
• We needed to initiate a process that enabled us to test business applications in a coordinated and semi-automate way.

Planning and Strategy

We developed a comprehensive migration plan covering:

• Identification of Incompatible Hardware and Software – We identified devices that didn’t meet Windows 11 requirements and defined swap-out criteria for the hardware refresh. We also identified and remediated software that was preventing the Windows 11 upgrade from initiating.
• Application Testing and Remediation – We identified 85 critical business applications and their owners.  We used Microsoft Bookings to schedule testing with application owners, and used a SharePoint list with a bespoke PowerShell application that facilitated note taking, status updates and virtual machine orchestration, providing management with real-time progress.
• Deployment Rings – We created deployment rings to facilitate Windows 11 operating system deployment (OSD) pilot testing, and identify general performance/usability refinements.  The pilot deployment rings included select IT users, application owners and digital leaders.  For the live rollout we created dynamic deployment rings that enabled us to scale up/down the rollout depending on network performance.
• Communication and FAQs – We contributed to comprehensive help documentation for Microsoft 365 and Windows 11 usability, enabling non-technical end-users to seamlessly transition to the new experience.
• Real-Time Updates – We built dashboards to provide management with real-time visibility of rollout progress, combined with weekly face-to-face meetings.

Application Packaging and Remediation

Not all applications were ready for Windows 11 or Microsoft 365 out of the box. We performed:

• Application Remediation – We packaged and remediated troublesome applications in MSI, App-V and PSADT formats. We also scripted disk clean-up activities on remote endpoints, purging temporary and cached application data to free up disk space and ensure Windows 11 deployment success.
• Complex Debugging – We debugged integration issues between business applications and Microsoft 365 components using Process Monitor, updating Office 365 cloud policies where appropriate with trusted locations, file block settings, ActiveX settings, macro settings and otherwise.
• Macro Rewriting and Access Form Modifications – We rewrote legacy Microsoft Excel macros to ensure compliance with modern Microsoft 365 standards, ensuring business-critical spreadsheets continued to function post-migration. We also re-authored Microsoft Access forms that used legacy 32-bit components no longer supported on 64-bit versions of Office.

Outcome

The project was a resounding success. We successfully migrated ~3,000 devices to Windows 11 and Microsoft 365 with zero disruption to business operations:

• 100% of critical business applications were successfully tested and remediated to work with Microsoft 365 and Windows 11.  All applications are now recorded in a centralised SharePoint repository with comprehensive notes and assigned application owners.
• Our dynamic deployment rings enabled us to scale our rollout in accordance with network monitoring performance metrics. This proved highly effective since the council were heavily reliant on their wireless network, and we were able to marginally scale back the rollout to mitigate initial performance bottlenecks.
• Users now have access to comprehensive help documentation, highlighting fundamental differences in functionality between Windows 10/Windows 11 and Office 2016/Microsoft 365.

Thanks to collaboration with the superb internal team, the council can now benefit from improved security, performance and collaboration across Microsoft 365 and Windows 11.

About

NHS (the “client”) are a publicly funded healthcare system in the United Kingdom, and required Windows 10 migration experts to migrate their estate from Windows 7 to Windows 10.

The Project

We were engaged to migrate circa 6,500 devices and 10,000 users from Windows 7 to Windows 10.  The timescales were aggressive – we were asked to complete this project within 3 months.  We were responsible for (but not limited to):

• Hardware integration for 20 models – SCCM operating system deployments (OSD) and driver packs for each model.
• Upgrading all Windows 7 devices to Windows 10, decommissioning those over 5 years old and repurposing those under 5 years old.
• Packaging and testing all applications using App-V 5.1 on Windows 10 x64.
• Implementing a non-persistent VDI solution.
• Implementing monthly patching and automatic deployment rules (ADR).
• Support end-users with Windows 10 issues

Challenges

• Aggressive timescales
• The Trust is geographically spread over 4 main sites, plus community sites
• Hardware asset locations were largely unknown
• An unrationalised application portfolio of over 1000 applications
• No pre-defined clinical testers for applications
• A non-persistent VDI environment, which meant a requirement to virtualise each application
• Legacy applications unsupported on Windows 10
• Covid-19 homeworking made laptop swaps challenging
• Many undocumented and manually installed applications
• Clinical peripherals including blood testers, barcode scanners, high-resolution cameras, smart card printers and more.

Solution

• We successfully integrated and tested 20 pieces of hardware
• We saved the client thousands of pounds by not using expensive audit software, and instead developed bespoke Power BI dashboards to join data from multiple data sources (LanSweeper, App-V Reporting, SCCM, Active Directory, ManageEngine and more) and drive the migration.
• Our business intelligence solution was used to derive a rollout strategy based on application usage count, the status of each application in the packaging process, and the user/device department.
• We performed a manual site audit to identify specific asset locations.  Combined with this, we developed a bespoke PowerShell solution to locate hardware which we were unable to manually locate.
• We rationalised the list of applications down to 277 from over 1,000.  We tested these for compatibility with Windows 10 x64 and App-V 5.1, packaged all applications used by 10 or more people, identified clinical testers, tested and documented each application.
• We supported Windows 10 end-users throughout the project.
• We set up clinics on-site to facilitate laptop swap outs, adhering to strict Covid-19 safety standards.
• We produced a patching process with pilot groups, testing major clinical applications as part of the pilot before we released security patches to all.
• We implemented a stable VDI solution which utilised Microsoft User-Experience Virtualisation (UE-V) to persist user preferences and settings across sessions.

Results

• We successfully migrated circa 6,500 devices to Windows 10 x64 within 3 months.  This was one of the fastest migrations to Windows 10 in the UK healthcare sector.
• The NHS Trust now has a managed application portfolio with fully-documented application packages.
• We saved the NHS thousands of pounds by forgoing the use of expensive audit software.  Our bespoke Power BI solution drove the migration perfectly, and users that were migrated always had their applications readily available on Windows 10.
• All hardware specifications now meet or exceed the minimum requirements for Windows 10.
• Users now have access to an optimised VDI environment with all required clinical applications.

About

A large banking client and engaged Alkane Solutions as Microsoft Subject Matter Experts (SME) to resolve complex issues.

The Project

• Windows 10 debugging, audit and optimisations
• Complex application packaging
• Microsoft App-V performance improvements
• General service improvements

Challenges

• The client had previously engaged a team for 3 months to find the root cause of an issue that caused blank pages to appear in Microsoft Edge, and failed authentication with Microsoft Teams – this issue was affecting thousands of users.  The previous incumbents were unable to resolve the issue.
• The client had previously engaged a team for 6 months to virtualise a complex suite of SAP applications using Microsoft App-V for a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment – this suite of applications was required by over 1000 users.  The previous incumbents were unable to provide a solution which worked.
• The client were experiencing network speed issues and poor performance of App-V streaming.  Alkane were engaged to identify the root cause and implement a solution.
• The client didn’t have a modern process in place to package applications – they were still testing applications on physical devices, and waiting 2 hours to rebuild them in between testing phases.

Solution

• We utilised Wireshark and Process Monitor to debug API calls and protocol/port network traffic.  Within a week we were able to ascertain a conflict between Sophos Antivirus policies and ForcePoint Endpoint DLP.  This resolved blank screens in Edge and Teams authentication issues.
• We provided a working SAP App-V package within 3 days – it was a complex package which required decoupling of components and also included an Excel add-in.  The client required centralised configurations which could be updated and utilised by all end-users in real-time.
• The client had various sites in remote locations, yet were only utilising one central App-V content share.  Alkane implemented a Distributed File System (DFS) namespace with replication to all remote sites.
• We implemented a Hyper-V environment and created virtual machines which could be replicated and rebuilt in a matter of seconds as opposed to hours.

Results

• The impact of fixing the ForcePoint issue was huge – service desk tickets reduced by several hundred.
• Over 1000 users were able to continue using SAP, in-line with the back-end upgrade.  Our solution meant that the project was a success and delivered on time.
• Networking performance was greatly improved in general, and App-V streaming times were increased exponentially.
• The throughput of application packages increased due to the simplified process of testing and snapshotting applications.