Next week you will see a ton of articles and blogs about the demise of Windows XP in April of 2014. As you are already well aware, there is only 1 year left of support for that operating system, and you are probably doing something about it in your organization already. There is no reason to continue to tell you the ramifications, either. Since you know you are going to need to do something or have most likely started, you are probably looking for ways to make the transition to your new platform(s) easier.

One of the ways to simplify your migration is to reduce the scope of apps you need to move by undertaking a rationalization initiative. If you are using a tool like SCCM to manage your inventory and you generate a report of the applications that you have out there, you will be in possession of a very large list of items. A lot of those items will be drivers and patches and other stuff you probably won’t care about, but you will be surprised at the number of real apps that you have in that list, including multiple versions of the same products, and stuff you didn’t know was out there and really shouldn’t be.

Identifying the real information in your portfolio and gathering some intelligence on that data will help you make the best decisions for you portfolio. After rationalization, we have seen portfolio reductions of over 20% quite regularly, which results in a reduction in project time and cost, and less work for you.

Original post on http://futurestateit.com/2013/04/02/everyone-knows-windows-xp-support-ends-in-a-year-so-what/