Tech Talk: Virtualization Helps Distribute Software During Tax Season

By Elizabeth Wasserman

An accounting firm uses application virtualization to keep its laptops up to date.

During the tax season, Hudson LLP, based in Alberta, Calgary, needed to dispatch its accountants to clients equipped with different versions of tax software. In the past, updating software on each of 30 laptops would be a monumental task and cause downtime. The problem was resolved with the use of application virtualization, Jim Grusendorf, the firm's senior network specialist, tells Inc. Technology Editor Elizabeth Wasserman in this Q&A.

Elizabeth Wasserman: What type of problems caused you to try virtualization?

Jim Grusendorf: It was with our laptops. I used to have to go around to every machine to install software updates. There are frequent software updates -- especially during tax season -- every year. The accountants that go out to client sites have laptops and they work on the clients accounting on site. I would just try to schedule time to go around to each machine and do the updates manually. We had about 25 laptops and it's increased to probably 30 now. It didn't take long per machine but because of how the accounting tax season is, it was really hard to schedule time to update the machines.

Wasserman: You also wanted to run different versions of software on the same machine, right?

Grusendorf: There's a separate version of the tax software for each year. Often our accountants have to go back 10 years for clients. They need to look at old returns. In the past, when I would run the next year's version along side of the last year's version, the last year's version would stop running. They shared INI files and registry location and DLL files. There was quite a bit of downtime associated with this while I tried to figure out what was going on.

Wasserman: So what did you decide to do?

Grusendorf: I looked around at some different deployment solutions. Because we didn't have a huge number of machines, I was looking for something fairly inexpensive. The Software Virtualization Solution from Altiris fit the bill. It lets me install an application on one machine and then send it out to all the laptops transparently. The virtualization software goes right on the workstations. When you want to load different versions of the same software, it intercepts all the registry and file systems and commands is they relate to the application and the operating system and it allows you to avoid conflict. It lets you run multiple versions of the same software on each laptop.

Wasserman: What have the results been?

Grusendorf: It's been wonderful. There aren't any complaints any more about anything. I don't hear anything from the accountants during tax season. They just keep working. It's when I'm not noticed that I know I'm doing a good job.