MDOP Smoothes Path For Windows 7 Deployment

Microsoft is firing on all marketing guns as it moves to create an adoption groundswell for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. For enterprise users, another key piece of the ecosystem is about to fall into place. That would be the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) 2009 R2, a multi-tentacled toolkit containing virtualization technologies and a bunch of management tools.The new Windows 7-oriented iteration of MDOP will be released in late October. As a policy/management umbrella, it's got a laundry list of tools, including -- get ready for the acronyms - Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM) 4.0; Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) 6.5; Desktop Error Monitoring (DEM) 3.5; and Asset Inventory Service (AIS).

But for me, there are clearly two capabilities which stand out in terms of importance, and could tip the balance for enterprises sitting on the upgrading fence. The first enables the create of a single OS image, so admins don't have to inventory hundreds of different configurations for their different users. According to Microsoft's typical naming conventions, you'd think this'd be called something like Unified Image Maintenance Management Tool (UIMMMMMMT) 6.7.8.5.1a. But you'd be wrong!

This highly useful feature falls under MDOP's Application Virtualization (App-V) heading. As described over on Technet, on Microsoft's Official MDOP blog, App-V lets you "reduce your base image footprint and new PC provisioning time - separate your applications from the base image, and minimize the number of applications installed after the image is deployed."

The ability to maintain a single OS image is a big part of the total cost of ownership (TCO) argument for Windows 7, and in subsequent posts I'll be looking at some of the adoption case studies Microsoft is releasing to support its case.

Windows XP Apps

The second key MDOP feature recognizes the reality that many enterprises skipped the Vista update cycle, and rely for their businesses Windows XP applications. The feature is called Enterprise Desktop Virtualization, or MED-V (that "M" must stand for Microsoft). The boilerplate for the MDOP blog says MED-V "will enable you to run applications that are not yet supported or tested on Windows 7, in a virtual Windows XP environment."

This is key because, while out-of-the-box applications compatibility with Windows 7 is a lot further along today than it was at a comparable period in Vista's life cycle, there are still a lot of apps -- particularly vertical ones -- which are still in the process of being ported over. MED-V removes that worry entirely.

To learn more about MDOP, and to check out more about the diagnostics and error-reporting features which I've given short shrift in this post, check out Technet's MDOP page, here.

For further reading, here's my article, Wolfe's Den: Windows 7 Deep Dive.

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Alex Wolfe is editor-in-chief of InformationWeek.com.