Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator 3.2 Released

Baldwin and his team have done it again.  Release after release they are adding great features into the free MAPs tool, making it even more of a must-use tool in planning and analysing for an infrastructure change.  So, as a recap for those who are new to my blog, or who haven’t heard of the MAP tool before:

“Many of our customers do not know what computers are in their IT environment or what applications have been deployed.  The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 3.2 makes it easier for customers and partners to quickly identify what servers, workstations, and network devices are in their IT environment. MAP also provides specific and actionable IT proposals and reports to help customers get the most value out of Microsoft products and infrastructure. Over 510,000 Microsoft customers and partners have already used MAP and its prior versions including Costco Wholesale Corporation, Continental Airlines, and Banque de Luxembourg.”

Pretty popular then!  Plus it’s free to download, so it doesn’t cost you anything to try it, and as a Partner, it may be a great addition alongside any of your current assessment tools, like VMware Capacity Planner, or PlateSpin’s PowerRecon.

MAP is a scalable and agent-less assessment platform designed to make it easier for our customers to adopt the latest Microsoft technologies. In this version, MAP has expanded its assessment capabilities to include SQL Server 2008, Forefront/NAP, and Microsoft Online Services migration, as well as providing a Power Savings assessment to help customers “go green.”

In summary, MAP 3.2 assessment areas now include:

• SQL Server 2008 Migration Proposals and Reports (NEW!)
• Forefront/NAP Readiness Proposals (NEW!)
• Microsoft Online Services Migration Surveys, Proposals, and Reports (NEW!)
• Power Savings Proposals (NEW!)
• Server Migration Reports and Proposals (Windows Server 2008 and “virtualized guests by hosts” reporting) (NEW!)
• Server Consolidation Reports and Proposals (Virtual Server 2005 R2 and Hyper-V)
• Desktop Security Assessment to determine if desktops have anti-virus and anti-malware programs installed and up-to-date, or if the Windows Firewall is turned on
• Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 Hardware Assessment Reports and Proposals

Key benefits:

• Fast and Agent-less. MAP provides secure network-wide assessment of environments of up to 100,000 computers in a matter of hours instead of days, all without deploying any software agents on each inventoried machine.
  
• Saves Pre-Sales and Planning Time. For most IT consultants and Microsoft Partners, a detailed network inventory and assessment of servers and desktops often takes days of manual labor.  With MAP, they can now drastically reduce the time it takes for the same inventory to a matter of hours; allowing them more time to focus their efforts on critical pre-sales engagement tasks.  For IT professionals, MAP can significantly reduce the time it takes to gather the information necessary to make the business case for client and server migration, as well as for their upcoming virtualization projects.
  
• Actionable Recommendations and Reporting. MAP offers valuable inventory and readiness assessment reports with specific upgrade recommendations and virtualization candidate reports that make it easier for IT migration and deployment projects to get off the ground and running.
  
• Coverage from Desktops to Servers. MAP provides technology assessment and planning recommendations for many Microsoft desktop and server products including SQL Server 2008, Forefront/NAP, Microsoft Online Services, Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V, Virtual Server 2005 R2, Windows Vista, 2007 Microsoft Office, Microsoft Application Virtualization (or App-V), System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007, and more.

Download Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.2 (RTM Bits)