Breaking News: MAP 5.5 is RTW!

RTW = Released to the Web-i-tubes

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The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP) version 5.5 has been released to the web.  This is the latest version of the toolset that many of you have seen me demonstrate in our TechNet Events.  It lets you take an inventory (agentless, I might add) of your environment – PCs, Servers, other devices – and then allows you to perform an analysis of readiness in several areas of interest.

“Areas of interest? What do you mean?”

Well… let’s say you’re curious about whether or not your desktops are ready to run Windows 7?   This tool will collect and inventory and generate a report on what machines are ready, which ones might need some hardware or software update first (and some basic details about what that update might be), and which ones simply won’t run Windows 7.  Now take that same idea of inventory –> reporting and apply it to things like readiness for Office 2010, Windows Server 2008, Virtualization with Hyper-V, etc. 

The overview from the download page reads:

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP) is an agentless, automated, multi-product planning and assessment tool for quicker and easier desktop and server migrations and upgrades. MAP provides detailed readiness assessment reports and executive proposals with extensive hardware and application information, and actionable recommendations to help organizations accelerate their IT infrastructure planning process, and gather more detail on assets that reside in their current environment. MAP also provides server utilization data for Hyper-V server virtualization planning; identifying server placements, and performing virtualization candidate assessments, including ROI analysis for server consolidation with Hyper-V.

“Sounds cool. And expensive. What does it cost?”

It’s free.  So it’s definitely worth taking a look at.

Here is the MAP home page. You’ll find all of the guides, how-to videos, and the download link there.