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

The Hidden Data Engineering Work Required to Make Enterprise AI Viable

If AI is the engine of a modern organization, then data engineering is the road system beneath it. You can build the most powerful engine in the world, but without paved roads, traffic signals, and bridges that can support its weight, it will stall. In many enterprises, the engine is ready. The roads are not ...

Why AI Is the Differentiator for Operationally Resilient Organizations

In the world of digital-first business, there is no tolerance for service outages. Businesses know that outages are the quickest way to lose money and customers. For smaller organizations, unplanned downtime could even force the business to close ... A new study from PagerDuty, The State of AI-First Operations, reveals that companies actively incorporating AI into operations now view operational resilience as a growth driver rather than a cost center. But how are they achieving it? ...

Escaping Pilot Purgatory: How AI Becomes an Operational Advantage

In live financial environments, capital markets software cannot pause for rebuilds. New capabilities are introduced as stacked technology layers to meet evolving demands while systems remain active, data keeps moving, and controls stay intact. AI is no exception, and its opportunities are significant: accelerated decision cycles, compressed manual workflows, and more effective operations across complex environments. The constraint isn't the models themselves, but the architectural environments they enter ...

Closing the Gap in Modern Tech and the Tools Meant to Monitor Them

Like most digital transformation shifts, organizations often prioritize productivity and leave security and observability to keep pace. This usually translates to both the mass implementation of new technology and fragmented monitoring and observability (M&O) tooling. In the era of AI and varied cloud architecture, a disparate observability function can be dangerous. IT teams will lack a complete picture of their IT environment, making it harder to diagnose issues while slowing down mean time to resolve (MTTR). In fact, according to recent data from the SolarWinds State of Monitoring & Observability Report, 77% of IT personnel said the lack of visibility across their on-prem and cloud architecture was an issue ...

MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Podcast - Episode 23: NetOps Labor Shortage

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 23, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses the NetOps labor shortage ... 

Why FinOps Rewrote Its Mission and What It Signals for Technology Management

Technology management is evolving, and in turn, so is the scope of FinOps. The FinOps Foundation recently updated their mission statement from "advancing the people who manage the value of cloud" to "advancing the people who manage the value of technology." This seemingly small change solidifies a larger evolution: FinOps practitioners have organically expanded to be focused on more than just cloud cost optimization. Today, FinOps teams are largely — and quickly — expanding their job descriptions, evolving into a critical function for managing the full value of technology ...

Clearing the Path to AI: Why Vendor Consolidation Matters Now

Enterprises are under pressure to scale AI quickly. Yet despite considerable investment, adoption continues to stall. One of the most overlooked reasons is vendor sprawl ... In reality, no organization deliberately sets out to create sprawling vendor ecosystems. More often, complexity accumulates over time through well-intentioned initiatives, such as enterprise-wide digital transformation efforts, point solutions, or decentralized sourcing strategies ...

Cold Data, Hot Problem: Why AI Is Rewriting Enterprise Storage Strategy

Nearly every conversation about AI eventually circles back to compute. GPUs dominate the headlines while cloud platforms compete for workloads and model benchmarks drive investment decisions. But underneath that noise, a quieter infrastructure challenge is taking shape. The real bottleneck in enterprise AI is not processing power, it is the ability to store, manage and retrieve the relentless volumes of data that AI systems generate, consume and multiply ...

Observability at a Crossroads: AI, Economics, Complexity and the Enduring Power of Open Source

The 2026 Observability Survey from Grafana Labs paints a vivid picture of an industry maturing fast, where AI is welcomed with careful conditions, SaaS economics are reshaping spending decisions, complexity remains a defining challenge, and open standards continue to underpin it all ...

Explainability Is the New Battleground in AI-Powered Observability

The observability industry has an evolving relationship with AI. We're not skeptics, but it's clear that trust in AI must be earned ... In Grafana Labs' annual Observability Survey, 92% said they see real value in AI surfacing anomalies before they cause downtime. Another 91% endorsed AI for forecasting and root cause analysis. So while the demand is there, customers need it to be trustworthy, as the survey also found that the practitioners most enthusiastic about AI are also the most insistent on explainability ...

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

The Hidden Data Engineering Work Required to Make Enterprise AI Viable

If AI is the engine of a modern organization, then data engineering is the road system beneath it. You can build the most powerful engine in the world, but without paved roads, traffic signals, and bridges that can support its weight, it will stall. In many enterprises, the engine is ready. The roads are not ...

Why AI Is the Differentiator for Operationally Resilient Organizations

In the world of digital-first business, there is no tolerance for service outages. Businesses know that outages are the quickest way to lose money and customers. For smaller organizations, unplanned downtime could even force the business to close ... A new study from PagerDuty, The State of AI-First Operations, reveals that companies actively incorporating AI into operations now view operational resilience as a growth driver rather than a cost center. But how are they achieving it? ...

Escaping Pilot Purgatory: How AI Becomes an Operational Advantage

In live financial environments, capital markets software cannot pause for rebuilds. New capabilities are introduced as stacked technology layers to meet evolving demands while systems remain active, data keeps moving, and controls stay intact. AI is no exception, and its opportunities are significant: accelerated decision cycles, compressed manual workflows, and more effective operations across complex environments. The constraint isn't the models themselves, but the architectural environments they enter ...

Closing the Gap in Modern Tech and the Tools Meant to Monitor Them

Like most digital transformation shifts, organizations often prioritize productivity and leave security and observability to keep pace. This usually translates to both the mass implementation of new technology and fragmented monitoring and observability (M&O) tooling. In the era of AI and varied cloud architecture, a disparate observability function can be dangerous. IT teams will lack a complete picture of their IT environment, making it harder to diagnose issues while slowing down mean time to resolve (MTTR). In fact, according to recent data from the SolarWinds State of Monitoring & Observability Report, 77% of IT personnel said the lack of visibility across their on-prem and cloud architecture was an issue ...

MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Podcast - Episode 23: NetOps Labor Shortage

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 23, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses the NetOps labor shortage ... 

Why FinOps Rewrote Its Mission and What It Signals for Technology Management

Technology management is evolving, and in turn, so is the scope of FinOps. The FinOps Foundation recently updated their mission statement from "advancing the people who manage the value of cloud" to "advancing the people who manage the value of technology." This seemingly small change solidifies a larger evolution: FinOps practitioners have organically expanded to be focused on more than just cloud cost optimization. Today, FinOps teams are largely — and quickly — expanding their job descriptions, evolving into a critical function for managing the full value of technology ...

Clearing the Path to AI: Why Vendor Consolidation Matters Now

Enterprises are under pressure to scale AI quickly. Yet despite considerable investment, adoption continues to stall. One of the most overlooked reasons is vendor sprawl ... In reality, no organization deliberately sets out to create sprawling vendor ecosystems. More often, complexity accumulates over time through well-intentioned initiatives, such as enterprise-wide digital transformation efforts, point solutions, or decentralized sourcing strategies ...

Cold Data, Hot Problem: Why AI Is Rewriting Enterprise Storage Strategy

Nearly every conversation about AI eventually circles back to compute. GPUs dominate the headlines while cloud platforms compete for workloads and model benchmarks drive investment decisions. But underneath that noise, a quieter infrastructure challenge is taking shape. The real bottleneck in enterprise AI is not processing power, it is the ability to store, manage and retrieve the relentless volumes of data that AI systems generate, consume and multiply ...

Observability at a Crossroads: AI, Economics, Complexity and the Enduring Power of Open Source

The 2026 Observability Survey from Grafana Labs paints a vivid picture of an industry maturing fast, where AI is welcomed with careful conditions, SaaS economics are reshaping spending decisions, complexity remains a defining challenge, and open standards continue to underpin it all ...

Explainability Is the New Battleground in AI-Powered Observability

The observability industry has an evolving relationship with AI. We're not skeptics, but it's clear that trust in AI must be earned ... In Grafana Labs' annual Observability Survey, 92% said they see real value in AI surfacing anomalies before they cause downtime. Another 91% endorsed AI for forecasting and root cause analysis. So while the demand is there, customers need it to be trustworthy, as the survey also found that the practitioners most enthusiastic about AI are also the most insistent on explainability ...