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Desktop management solutions

Your students, faculty, staff, and administrators depend on computers like the air they breathe. To keep up with their information and communication needs, your desktop infrastructure must continuously adapt to support new applications, capabilities, and security patches. Without the right tools, creating and managing that infrastructure can be a significant drain on your time and budget.

With technologies like Windows 7, the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, and Microsoft Virtualization, along with free planning and deployment toolkits, you can change your desktop infrastructure from an administrative burden into a strategic asset.

Solving real-world challenges

The days are long gone when you had only a few computers to manage. It used to be that you could simply use a CD-ROM to individually update each computer. These days, keeping hundreds—or even thousands—of computers running well with the right software can be a daunting responsibility. Managing those computers one at a time can be nearly impossible.

We offer the technology you need to automate desktop management and to create virtual desktops, and we provide free tools to help you:

• Assess your current IT infrastructure.
• Find the right technologies for your needs.
• Plan, build, test, and deploy the technology across your desktop infrastructure.

Getting started

To get started, download these two free toolkits:

1) The Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) unifies the tools and processes required for desktop and server deployment into a common deployment console and collection of guidance. The fourth-generation deployment accelerator adds integration with recently released Microsoft deployment technologies to create a single path for image creation and automated installation. MDT tools and end-to-end guidance reduce deployment time, standardize desktop and server images, limit service disruptions, reduce post-deployment help desk costs, and improve security and ongoing configuration management.

2) The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit Solution Accelerator is an agentless toolkit that finds computers on a network and performs a detailed inventory of the computers using Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), the Remote Registry Service, or the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). Using this data, MAP will assess and report whether computers can run Windows 7, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, and Microsoft Application Virtualization (formerly SoftGrid). Assessments for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista also include information about device driver availability and potentially required hardware upgrades.

Key benefits

Desktop management solutions from Microsoft can help you:

• Maximize return on IT investments. By helping you plan, create, and deploy desktop images, you can start using the software upgrades you’ve invested in through Software Assurance and your Microsoft Volume Licensing agreement.
• Save IT resources. When you use Microsoft desktop management solutions, you can free up your most important IT resource—people.
• Improve security. By automating the way you implement security updates across your desktops, you get security patches deployed quickly and you help reduce the chances of missing an update because of human error.
• Know if your computers are ready for upgrades. With the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit Solution Accelerator, you’ll get a clear inventory of which computers can run the latest Microsoft desktop software.

Next steps

• Find a Microsoft partner to help you plan out and create a desktop management solution in your district or university.
• Contact us to learn more about unified communications solutions and how they could help you.