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Rob Waggoner
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We just announced that the next version of Windows Intune will be released on October 17, 2011.  You can check here for the official release statement, but the big items included in this next release are:

  • Software Distribution: You can now use Windows Intune to deploy software and updates to your managed machines.  Windows Intune can deploy .EXE, .MSI, and .MSP files, both Microsoft and third-party software.  The installation files are uploaded to the Windows Intune cloud based storage and then can be deployed to your client machines.  My teammate J.J. Antequino does a good job of walking you through the software distribution process here. 
  • Remote Tasks: You can now initiate a number of tasks on your managed client machines directly from your administrative console.  You can:
    • Initiate immediate malware scans on your managed computers.
    • Force a malware signature update on your managed computers .
    • Force a restart of a managed computer .
  • Enhanced License Management: We’ve updated the capabilities of the license management to include more than just Microsoft VL licenses.  Not only does it support additional Microsoft Licensing methods, but it now lets you manage third-party licenses as well. 
  • Read-Only Access: Now you can give select administrators read-only access to the administrative console so they can view the information without accidently making changes.  This is great!  You know those people that think they should have access; or those people that are coming up to speed and shouldn’t be making changes yet?  Now you can give them read-only access so they can see and interact with the console without having to worry about what they changed.
  • Enhanced Reporting: Create hardware reports based on new hardware filters and save the filters for ongoing use.  We included a lot more granularity in the reporting and now you can save these report templates for ongoing use.
  • Customized Alerts: We provide much more granularity in the Alerting process so now you can be much more proactive in the management of your customer’s environment.

Of course there are a lot of other impactful improvements with this latest release that I haven’t touched on; you can check out the Windows Intune FAQ for more details. 

For all of the details on Windows Intune, just check out http://www.windowsintune.com. 

To sign up for an evaluation of Windows Intune, you can go here. 

Windows Intune content for partners is available on the U.S. partner portal at https://partner.microsoft.com/US/40136477.

The Cloud Essentials Pack subscription at http://www.microsoftcloudpartner.com/us/default.aspx.  The Cloud Essentials Pack includes internal-use rights for Windows Intune  (up to 25 licenses).

 

Until next time,

Rob