A few months back I blogged about a great product in Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) called the Asset Inventory Service (AIS) and how it can help you better manage your hardware and software inventory using a cloud based service. IT Pros have been telling us that they really like AIS since it helps them get the inventory of machines that don’t always connect into the corporate network and how easy it is to maintain since there is no server infrastructure. We have also heard some great feedback on what you wanted to see and we are happy to announce that we are releasing an update to AIS which incorporates this feedback and makes it even easier to manage your assets.

One of the biggest asks we heard was around license management and extending this to non-Microsoft Volume Licensed software. This update now makes that available. AIS will now manage Microsoft Retail Licenses, Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) licenses for Microsoft software, and third-party software licenses. Another piece of feedback we got was around reporting and especially around the hardware information. This update also adds a new hardware inventory report to make it easier see information like Manufacturer, Chassis type, Available disk space, Memory installed, and CPU speed across your environment in one simple to run report.

We also made some general administration and usability improvements in the Silverlight console like the ability to right-click, drag and drop, and create custom views. With this update AIS will also more than double the number of languages supported by adding Arabic, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Swedish, and Turkish.

If you want to learn more about how AIS can make asset intelligence easier for you and your organization check out the MDOP Resource page, our AIS videos, and the online help page.