{"id":8594,"date":"2006-10-18T08:36:00","date_gmt":"1999-11-29T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=8594"},"modified":"2006-10-18T08:36:00","modified_gmt":"1999-11-29T20:00:00","slug":"microsoft-desktop-optimization-pack-for-software-assurance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=8594","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Starting in January 2007, Microsoft will start to offer a new package, the Desktop Otimization Pack for Software Assurance,\u00a0for maangaing the personal computer environment.\u00a0 It will be available to customers who have purchased Software Assurance with a Open, Select or Enterprise Agreement.\u00a0 The cost of the pack will be $10\/desktop (US).\u00a0 Microsoft have publised a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/presspass\/features\/2006\/oct06\/10-17Desktop.mspx\">case study <\/a>from a deployment of this pack at Expedia.\u00a0 An new <a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/windowsvista\/getready\/optimizeddesktop.mspx\">product\u00a0page <\/a>with further details is on the Microsoft web site.<\/div>\n<div>\u00a0<\/div>\n<div>On the face of it, you&#8217;ll think&#8230; great more costs.\u00a0 But hold on.\u00a0 This one is\u00a0pretty interesting.\u00a0 What do you get for your money?<\/div>\n<div>\u00a0<\/div>\n<ul>\n<li>Microsoft Softgrid:\u00a0Softrird (from the Softricity acquisition) is a super new way of deploying complex application catologs to the desktop environment.\u00a0 Using application virtualisation you can seperate the application from ther desktop&#8217;s OS installation and from other applications.\u00a0 This reduces complexity, eliminates regression testing,\u00a0resolves compatibility problems\u00a0and increases security.\u00a0 Self service user deployment (with workflow\/approval)is possible via a web portal which minimises IT involvment in application deployment.\u00a0 Also, by using streaming, wasted disk space is eliminated.<\/li>\n<li>Microsoft Asset Inventory Services: Every application installed on your desktop network can be identified for auditing purposes.\u00a0 This goes much fiurther than SMS 2003 on SP2 si going because it can identify application from a database of 430,000 known applications.\u00a0 It does not just rely on the contents of add\/remove programs because as we know, many vendors do not adhere to well accepted standards.<\/li>\n<li>Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management: To quote Microsoft, it <em>&quot;increases control over Group Policy Objects (GPOs) \u2013 the component rules within Windows\u2019 administrative management system \u2013 and is intended to allow IT administrators to delegate or assign administrative control of specific tasks based on employees\u2019 titles or roles &#8230; provides administrators additional safeguards for GPOs, including detailed logs to track all changes and the ability to quickly undo inappropriate changes. These new tools function as a native extension to Microsoft\u2019s Group Policy Management Console, providing a central management interface for all Group Policy administration&quot;<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Microsoft Diagnostic and Recovery Toolset: This offers diagnostic tools, the ability to recover data that has been lost and a post crash analysis toolkit.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There is a feature chart <a href=\"http:\/\/download.microsoft.com\/download\/c\/2\/9\/c2935f83-1a10-4e4a-a137-c1db829637f5\/10-17-06MSDesktopOptimizePck2.pdf\">available<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone tracking what Microsoft has been doing will have noticed a number of acquisitions of interesting players in this market.\u00a0 I can see that Softrgrid was purcahsed from Softricity.\u00a0 I am wondering if Advanced Group Policy Management is a result of the Desktop Authority acquisition.\u00a0 The tools in\u00a0the Diagnostic and Recovery Toolset are a result of the recent Winternals acquisition.<\/p>\n<p>This tool kit will be of great benifit to desktop\/laptop administrators.\u00a0 It will reduce complexity, offer new deployment mechanisms, reduce project times and costs, enahnce automation\u00a0and enable them to spend more time on engineering rather than firefighting or repetitive tasks.\u00a0 And if things do go wrong, there will be tools to help diagnose those problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Starting in January 2007, Microsoft will start to offer a new package, the Desktop Otimization Pack for Software Assurance,\u00a0for maangaing the personal computer environment.\u00a0 It will be available to customers who have purchased Software Assurance with a Open, Select or Enterprise Agreement.\u00a0 The cost of the pack will be $10\/desktop (US).\u00a0 Microsoft have publised a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=8594\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}