Latest News & Resources Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) is now Microsoft Deployment! Microsoft has announced the RC1 release and new name for the fourth generation deployment Solution Accelerator, Microsoft Deployment. The current generation of automated deployment tools from Microsoft is increasingly unified; the same tools, utilities and products in many cases offer support and functionality for desktop and server deployment tasks. Following the trend of unified tools, the Business Desktop Deployment team has incorporated new functionality and guidance to support automated server deployment in addition to desktop deployment capabilities. This expanded feature set, with its guidance and ability to automate installation of Windows client and server operating systems – as well as applications – has effectively outgrown the current name, Business Desktop Deployment. Previous Beta releases have been using the code name “Deployment 4” to refer to Microsoft Deployment before the name was finalized. For more info check my blog entry, http://blogs.technet.com/jasons/archive/2007/10/25/bdd-is-no-more-long-live-md.aspx. Microsoft Deployment Summit 2007 On Tuesday 18th September Microsoft held a repeat of the successful Vista and Office 2007 Deployment Summit run a week earlier on the 12th. As promised, here is the link to the PowerPoint deck used on the day. (http://desktopdeployment.co.uk/Documents/Microsoft%20Deployment%20Summit.pdf) . During the Office Deployment section Steve Green recieved a question about the LIS Tool for Office 2007, but did not get the attendee's email address to be able to reply. The answer is that the tool doesn't exist, nor can it - see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/924616/ which explains that the MSOCACHE on the drive where Office is installed cannot be moved or removed. Hope this helps. 2nd Vista and Office 2007 Deployment Summit at TVP Taking your first look at Windows Vista or Office 2007 and the deployment challenges ahead? The team will be running a 2nd free community Deployment Summit on the 12th September where you can find out more about Business Desktop Deployment, Application Remediation and Office 2007 deployment.
BDD 2007 3.0.142.0 (Patch 1) Available The first patch for BDD 2007 is now available or for those of you just getting started it is now included in the download. Improvements to driver injection and support for USMT 3.01 are just a few of the updates. Check out the release notes for installation tips and more information. Application Readiness for Windows Vista A great new resource is available online for deployment teams looking at application compatibily. The database is an online version of the compatibility information used by ACT, so if you don't want to run the tool you can just quickly check an individual application against the list. DDPS Videos The Desktop Deployment Planning Service videos are now online to stream... Click on the links below: The 1st UK Community Deployment Summit !
Thankyou to all of you that were able to join Keith, Jason and Dave for the Deployment Summit in Reading. We had some fantastic presenters at the event to "Talk Deployment" which included Garry Corcoran, Paul Schnell, Paul Butterworth, Steve Green, Steve Reay and Davidson Baron. It was great to meet so many people and for those of you that were unable to attend watch this space for news of any future events.
I have uploaded pdf versions of the presentations for all of the sessions on the day : Please feel free to contact the team with any follow on questions from the sessions you attended. BDD hits April's Server Management Magazine Interested in getting started and finding out more about Business Desktop Deployment, read this months Server Management article written by Dave. Business Desktop Deployment Source Code Available The source code for Business desktop deployment (BDD 2007) has now been made available for download on the Microsoft site for partners and customers that may need to make modifications. Partner TV Interview with Adam Shepherd & Richard Smith James here - I just wanted to give you a heads up on the latest Partner TV interview available over on the Partner TV blog. In this episode I chatted to Adam and Richard about some of the deployment tools available to help understand your IT "landscape" to allow better planning and a better execution. To check out the video, head over to the Partner TV blog.
| Deployment Tools Use BDD 2007 to download, install and manage them via the component page.
Application compatibility Toolkit 5.0 - Analyze and mitigate your application compatibility issues.
Office Migration Planning Manager - A group of tools designed to help administrators during the planning and testing phases of a 2007 Microsoft Office system deployment.
Windows Vista Hardware Assessment - The newly released Windows Vista Hardware Assessment solution accelerator is an agentless assessment tool that makes it easier for customers and IT consultants to quickly assess their existing PCs' readiness for Windows Vista migration. Volume Activation Management Tool – Automate and centrally manage the volume activation process using a Multiple Activation Key (MAK). VAMT can perform both MAK proxy and MAK independent activation of single or multiple remote computers running volume editions of Windows Vista at once.
Key Management Service (KMS) – Enable KMS on a Windows Server 2003 environment. KMS enables customers to host a local service within their environment which can be used by volume editions of Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Enterprise for activation.
KMS Management Pack for MOM 2005 – Monitor and report the health of the KMS hosts fulfilling the activation requests within their organization. System administrators can create alerts for conditions that could indicate KMS outages or impending problems
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