Are you getting ready to deploy Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista SP1 and Microsoft Virtualization technologies?  Check out the brand new Solution Accelerators Microsoft is releasing this week!

Today, Microsoft is launching three Solution Accelerators that will help IT professionals and Microsoft Partners more quickly assess, plan, secure, deploy and manage (operate) Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista SP1 and Microsoft Virtualization. 

In the form of automation tools and technical guidance, these accelerators are developed with industry best practice in mind and can speed up every stage of your IT project lifecycle from server and desktop deployments projects to virtualization.

What's Released This Week?

There are 3 solution accelerators released this week and another 1 in mid-March.

• Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator (MAP)
• MAP is a network-wide inventory and assessment tool platform that is based on an agentless, zero foot-print architecture.
• It allows customers and consultants to discover servers, desktops, applications and devices as well as assessing for migration readiness.
• Key features including hardware and device compatibility assessments of existing machines for the latest Windows OS migration (e.g. Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista SP1), Microsoft Office 2007 hardware assessment and virtualization candidacy assessments for Virtual Server 2005 R2, Microsoft Application Virtualization (formerly SoftGrid) and, very soon, Hyper-V.
• Download MAP Today!

• Infrastructure Planning and Design Guides (IPD)
• The IPD guides describe the architectural considerations and streamline the design processes for planning and implementing Microsoft infrastructure technologies. Each guide addresses a unique infrastructure technology or scenario including server virtualization, application virtualization, terminal services implementation and more.
• New guides released this week include scenarios for Active Directory, Terminal Services and WDS.
• Download IPD Guides Today!

• Windows Server 2008 Security Guide
• This Guide provides IT professionals with best practices and automated tools to help strengthen the security of servers running Windows Server 2008 and specifically provides prescriptive guidance for hardening Terminal Services on servers running Windows Server 2008.
• Based on extensive experience from customers, government agencies, and Microsoft security experts, this Guide describes how customers can choose from two pre-configured security baselines. Both configurations have been thoroughly tested in Microsoft labs, and validated by customers and partners under real-world conditions
• Get the Windows Server 2008 Security Guide and the automated GPOAccelerator today!

• Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (coming soon in mid-March)
• Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, formerly known as Business Desktop Deployment, decreases the time and cost of client and server deployments through unifying the tools and processes into a common console and collection of guidance.
• It supports the deployment of Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, the 2007 Microsoft Office system and other applications.
• For fully automated Zero Touch deployments, System Center Configuration Manager is used as the common console for Microsoft Deployment, leveraging the robust scheduling and monitoring capabilities of System Center Configuration Manager. For organizations without a management infrastructure, Microsoft Deployment provides a Microsoft Management Console snap-in as the common console to manage manually initiated Lite Touch deployments.
• Check out our home page for Microsoft Deployment today!

Start getting your projects off the ground with Microsoft Solution Accelerators!

Baldwin Ng (Sr. Product Manager, Solution Accelerators)