Announcing Microsoft Assessment and Planning Beta Refresh for Windows Vista & Windows Server 2008

Posted by:
Baldwin Ng
04:12 PM Saturday
Jan 26, 2008
10 Comments

Introducing Microsoft Assessment and Planning 3.0

For those of you who are considering the migration of your desktop and server infrastructure to Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008, we have good news for you!

As we've announced at TechEd IT Forum 2007 in Barcelona last November, the Microsoft Solution Accelerators team is going to release the expanded version of Windows Vista Hardware Assessment 2.1 called Microsoft Assessment and Planning 3.0 (aka MAP).

In short, MAP is an automated agent-less network-wide inventory and assessment tool that can quickly determine if your organization's desktops and servers are ready for migration to Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

What do I mean by AGENT-LESS inventory? Simply put, it means that you do not need to launch any software agents on any of those machines you want this tool to inventory and query - so no more security concerns and user interruption!

It offers quick network-wide inventory of machines and generate hardware and device compatibility reports with actionable recommendations in the form of auto-generated proposal documents - perfect documentation for your IT project planning in the new fiscal year!

The best part is that you can use this tool to inventory your environments ONCE and get multiple assessments and reports for not just server and desktop migration, but also various virtualization options from Microsoft (see our Virtualization Day Summit blog post here)!

How it Works?

Through the use of a sophisticated, agent-less and network-wide inventory engine, Microsoft Assessment and Planning will be able to discover machines on your network whether they are in workgroups or managed AD environments. By way of WMI, Win32, SNMP and other protocols, we can then securely collect hardware and device attributes of each machine and auto-generate migration readiness reports in Microsoft Word and Excel for the user.

What a great way to help you jump-start your planning process when you know your manager is waiting for your IT project plans for the New Year!

What's New with MAP 3.0?

Full incorporation of the features of Windows Vista Hardware Assessment including the generation of reports and proposals in 7 languages including N. American English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Spanish and Portuguese
Windows Server 2008 migration hardware assessment
Windows server virtualization assessment (supports Virtual Server 2005 R2; will also add Hyper-V assessment in later this year)
Application virtualization infrastructure assessment for Microsoft Application Virtualization (formerly SoftGrid)
New Graphical User Interface

Check it Out!

Download the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Beta Refresh today, give us your feedback, and see how you may get a free copy of Windows Vista software and more!
Visit the MAP Team Blog to learn more or check out other great Solution Accelerators!
Subscribe to the Windows Vista Team Blog & MAP Team Blog RSS feeds to make sure you're the FIRST to know when MAP 3.0 will RTM (target date: February 27, 2008)
Sign up to join our weekly Live Meetings and chat directly with our development team
Download the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment - if you can't wait for MAP RTM version (RTM on Feb 27)

See you next time!

Baldwin Ng - Sr. Product Manager, Microsoft Assessment and Planning + Virtualization Solution Accelerators

Comments

dovella

Posted on: January 28, 2008 at 4:00AM
Great Work

THX
Monty1955

Posted on: January 30, 2008 at 12:37AM
Since I have bought a top end computer with Vista my computer experience has been a disaster. I would suggest that Mr Windows and everyone else involved in this billion dollar bussines should get there act together BEFORE they put there so called Awwwwwsome Operating system on the market. Wasn't Vista supposed to make life easier? Well, of course you just go and watch TV instead, beacause there is naf all you can accomplish with a Vista system on your computer. Except continuasly restarting the thing and answering questions about 'do you really wanna do this... are you sure.' This service pack better be good or I will be seriously looking at Linux. Mr Gates should be shown the Door.

Two fingers UP
eponymousnyc

Posted on: January 30, 2008 at 4:01PM
I am so over Vista, both at home and in the office. I tell everyone who asks to avoid it and I've told me company we will not be installing it. You'd have to blow my doors off with this service pack if you want to change my mind, but I doubt that will happen. You should just give it up and try again with the next Windows. You failed this time.
MrTizzie

Posted on: January 31, 2008 at 7:37PM
Monty1955 and eponymousnyc should be given a computer with the release version of XP because they seem to have forgotten how terrible THAT was. And yet it rose from the ashes of being another Windows ME to an extremely respectable OS after two service packs.

So I have faith that Vista will eventually be good, it's just horrendous right now.
eponymousnyc

Posted on: February 01, 2008 at 10:20AM
Great. So Vista Service Pack 2 should really rock. You'd think they'd have learned something from the past and gotten it right the first time.

Hey MS. Now that you're working on Vista's replacement, remember this: Less is more.
eponymousnyc

Posted on: February 02, 2008 at 5:00PM
Anybody tried this?

"A free download that can cut Windows Vista's gargantuan footprint by half or more is developing a big following on the Internet. vLite is a configuration tool that lets users automatically delete a lot of unnecessary Vista components — such as Windows Media Player and MSN installer — to pare the OS down to a reasonable size. The software is catching on. An InformationWeek story notes that a forum that asks users to suggest new features has drawn nearly 50,000 page views. Meanwhile, Microsoft officials have themselves conceded that Vista is "bloated" and are developing the next version of Windows on a core called MinWin, which is smaller than Vista by an order of magnitude."
bariyer

Posted on: October 05, 2009 at 3:40AM
As innovations such as windows server 2008 vista that is the human spirit surging technology jobs in the branch has been achieved thanks very good

Trackbacks

Posted by: The World Simplified is a Virtual World on January 29, 2008 at 6:24AM
I will keep harping on about this tool as the more I use it in projects and work activities the more
Posted by: Paul Mooney on January 29, 2008 at 7:46AM
Announcing Microsoft Assessment and Planning Beta Refresh for Windows Vista & Windows Server 2008...
Posted by: Microsoft Assessment and Planning Team Blog on February 05, 2008 at 3:40AM
Hello all, In case you haven't heard, the Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista SP1 have been released