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The Windows 8 Effect: Will This New Platform Impact App Performance?

Windows 8 represents the very latest in application development and deployment architecture from Microsoft, allowing today’s developers to showcase their applications on a new and modern platform.

For many, staying current with the latest technology is critical in addressing IT risk, and also business continuity issues. But what if you’re coding in an older language or have existing apps that you haven’t yet modernized? Don’t worry; innovative technologies make it simple and easy to move your existing applications to the Windows 8 architecture, without changing your application code.

Windows 8 also offers the IT group the possibility of moving to a simplified architecture. Whether you’re coding in COBOL, C#, or VB.NET, the Windows 8 platform is compatible with all of these enterprise development languages. Windows 8 is more than just the next operating system; it is the next platform step for application modernization.

Additionally, long-standing, more complex applications, such as those from banks, insurance carriers and travel agencies, will continue to operate, servicing their users, but now leveraging the very latest and modern technology platform. This provides both a current sense of stability, but also a future path for innovation.

Application performance is often seen as an advantage in moving to the latest operating environment. Many expect that new and existing application deployments can be executed faster and require fewer resources and management. This can be the case in some scenarios, but not across all application deployments.

Certain environments are more appropriate for enterprise application development – Windows 8 is a great example because it supports an industry leading Integrated Development Environment – Visual Studio. Visual Studio combined with Windows 8 increases application development agility and efficiency, giving programmers the ability to take advantage of productive feature sets, and also leverage more modern capabilities, like the Windows 8 tile and touch screen features — a popular addition to the platform. Essentially, Windows 8 delivers a new, efficient, and modern operating environment for enterprise class application development and deployment.

An interesting and further impact of the Windows 8 platform on the development world is its effect on development team behavior. The new platform, as its predecessors, will encourage software engineers to think about whether their applications area ready for the next-generation development and deployment platform. If, however, they aren’t, the popularity of the new platform will motivate them to prepare for that move. This will lead to application compatibility features and roadmaps being developed by architecture teams– and more Windows 8 ready applications will begin to surface in the Windows App store.

So there you have it. While Windows 8 won’t necessarily revolutionize application performance, it will undeniably change the development process and development team behavior. Not only will it challenge existing application architectures, but it will also enable these applications to adopt a more dynamic and user-friendly experience. Today’s application developers will have a whole new environment on which to deliver apps and a new challenge to solve when it comes to application compatibility and modernization.

It will be interesting to watch the continued adoption of the Windows 8 platform, particularly within the corporate market, as organizations begins to prepare for this next wave of innovation.

ABOUT Ed Airey

Ed Airey is the product marketing director for the COBOL products at Micro Focus. Micro Focus is the leading provider of enterprise application modernization, testing, and management solutions. His latest project, Micro Focus Visual COBOL 2.1, makes it easy to move and modernize existing COBOL application for the Windows 8 platform.

Related Links:

www.microfocus.com

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The Windows 8 Effect: Will This New Platform Impact App Performance?

Windows 8 represents the very latest in application development and deployment architecture from Microsoft, allowing today’s developers to showcase their applications on a new and modern platform.

For many, staying current with the latest technology is critical in addressing IT risk, and also business continuity issues. But what if you’re coding in an older language or have existing apps that you haven’t yet modernized? Don’t worry; innovative technologies make it simple and easy to move your existing applications to the Windows 8 architecture, without changing your application code.

Windows 8 also offers the IT group the possibility of moving to a simplified architecture. Whether you’re coding in COBOL, C#, or VB.NET, the Windows 8 platform is compatible with all of these enterprise development languages. Windows 8 is more than just the next operating system; it is the next platform step for application modernization.

Additionally, long-standing, more complex applications, such as those from banks, insurance carriers and travel agencies, will continue to operate, servicing their users, but now leveraging the very latest and modern technology platform. This provides both a current sense of stability, but also a future path for innovation.

Application performance is often seen as an advantage in moving to the latest operating environment. Many expect that new and existing application deployments can be executed faster and require fewer resources and management. This can be the case in some scenarios, but not across all application deployments.

Certain environments are more appropriate for enterprise application development – Windows 8 is a great example because it supports an industry leading Integrated Development Environment – Visual Studio. Visual Studio combined with Windows 8 increases application development agility and efficiency, giving programmers the ability to take advantage of productive feature sets, and also leverage more modern capabilities, like the Windows 8 tile and touch screen features — a popular addition to the platform. Essentially, Windows 8 delivers a new, efficient, and modern operating environment for enterprise class application development and deployment.

An interesting and further impact of the Windows 8 platform on the development world is its effect on development team behavior. The new platform, as its predecessors, will encourage software engineers to think about whether their applications area ready for the next-generation development and deployment platform. If, however, they aren’t, the popularity of the new platform will motivate them to prepare for that move. This will lead to application compatibility features and roadmaps being developed by architecture teams– and more Windows 8 ready applications will begin to surface in the Windows App store.

So there you have it. While Windows 8 won’t necessarily revolutionize application performance, it will undeniably change the development process and development team behavior. Not only will it challenge existing application architectures, but it will also enable these applications to adopt a more dynamic and user-friendly experience. Today’s application developers will have a whole new environment on which to deliver apps and a new challenge to solve when it comes to application compatibility and modernization.

It will be interesting to watch the continued adoption of the Windows 8 platform, particularly within the corporate market, as organizations begins to prepare for this next wave of innovation.

ABOUT Ed Airey

Ed Airey is the product marketing director for the COBOL products at Micro Focus. Micro Focus is the leading provider of enterprise application modernization, testing, and management solutions. His latest project, Micro Focus Visual COBOL 2.1, makes it easy to move and modernize existing COBOL application for the Windows 8 platform.

Related Links:

www.microfocus.com

Hot Topics

The Latest

AI is becoming the operating system of the enterprise. It acts as an invisible coordination layer that understands intent, connects systems, and executes work across complex SaaS environments. Previously, employees had to click through multiple systems — CRM, ERP, support tools, collaboration platforms — to complete a single task. Now, instead of navigating each application manually, they can simply state what they need to accomplish ...

In 2026, the cost of downtime or an outage is no longer just a technical inconvenience; it's a $600 billion wake up call for global businesses. As our digital ecosystems become  more interconnected, each touchpoint introduces new risks and multiplies the consequences when things go wrong. And the data is clear: aggregate downtime costs  for Global 2,000 companies have surged 50% since 2024, reaching a staggering $600 billion ...

Deloitte found that 74% of enterprises expect to deploy agentic AI solutions in the next 24 months. However, the rush to deployment is outpacing foundational work, though. Only 21% of enterprises have fully formed agent governance models in place. The result? AI agents deployed without guidance or governance begin to function as fragmented islands of complexity ...

Cloud spending is no longer viewed as a passthrough IT expense, but as a strategic financial lever that directly impacts innovation capacity, profitability and enterprise resilience, according to the CFO Cloud Cost Optimization Report from Azul ...

As AI moves from generating responses to performing actions, the need for trust increases exponentially. And as organizations enlist AI agents for increasingly sophisticated business processes, trust is going to be the single most important theme for spurring adoption. What can organizations do to build trustworthy AI agents? ...

I've spent a lot of time in the channel, and one thing I keep coming back to is this: a partner program is only as good as what it looks like in the field. Many programs look great on paper, but when a partner is in front of a customer navigating a complex hybrid environment or trying to make the case for AI-powered observability, the gap between what a vendor promises and what it actually delivers becomes very clear, very fast ...

Enterprises today operate in a real-time environment where uninterrupted access to trusted data has become a baseline expectation for users, applications and automated systems. Traditional DataOps models, built on manual effort and human triage, cannot keep pace with this always active demand. AI agents are emerging as the operational backbone, ensuring consistent data availability, reinforcing trustworthiness and enabling a level of scale that manual processes cannot achieve ...

For decades, trust in the digital workplace rested on familiar signals. We trusted faces on video calls, voices on the phone, and emails that appeared to come from people we knew. These cues felt human and intuitive. They anchored how decisions were made, approvals were granted, and access was authorized. AI-powered deepfakes have quietly broken that model ...

Cloud migration was supposed to be a one-way door. For most enterprises, it turns out it isn't. Cloud data repatriation is a real and growing trend. A new survey ... finds that 89% of organizations plan to expand their on-premises infrastructure footprint over the next two years — and 75% have already moved at least some workloads back from public cloud in the past 24 months. The findings point to a broad rethinking of where data belongs ...

Over the past few years, large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized the software industry. Given their ability to excel at multi-step reasoning, LLMs have helped enterprises streamline workflows and adapt to the unknown. However, employing such models comes with sky-high costs, latency issues, and limited flexibility. In the realm of IT operations, it is generally wiser to employ smaller, domain-specific models instead ...