The Author, Augusto Alvarez works as a consultant and has experience writing on the topic fo App-V, having authored a more introductory step-by-step book for the same publisher which covered v4.6 in 2011. The book’s subtitle sums up the lofty goal of the book quite well: “Master Microsoft App-V by taking a deep dive into advanced topics and acquire all the necessary skills to optimize your application virtualization platform”.

Does it pull this off? Yes, yes it does. I’m often disappointed at a book that claims to be “advanced” (especially for a subject area that is arguabley complex already). So to provide a readable summary of what is covered here, I’ll be as brief as possible:

The sequencing of applications and the deployment of itself App-V in “complex environments” each get their own chapters and with another large section dedicated to scripting and command line support is a great sign that this is indeed a book that satisfies the expectations of an “advanced guide”. Design considerations and scaling of App-V implementations and a nice fat section on troubleshooting. It covers SCCM integration and also integrating App-V in an VDI environment. Finally it closes off with a chapter on integrating Sever App-V with private clouds. Finally, there is an appendix includes a brief summary of dozens of Microsoft third-party tools for App-V.

If you know App-V, use App-V and want a good reference for getting the most out of App-V this is the book you’ve been looking for!

http://www.packtpub.com/microsoft-application-virtualization-advanced-guide/book

Note: the chapter on Integrating App-V with SCCM 2012 (yes the very latest) is available free as a sample download chapter at the link above.