Microsoft’s Brad Anderson lays out the company’s plan to deliver converged technologies that will enable customers to more efficiently manage centralized and distributed desktops as well as other client devices.
Microsoftrecognizes that IT managers today are responsible for the care and feeding of more sophisticated systems. That’s why Brad Anderson, corporate vice president for the Management Services Division at Microsoft, works with the Windows team to ensure manageability, simplicity and potentially lower costs when it comes to managing myriad client devices.
9 hot products for managing Microsoft
“There are increasing requirements on IT from the end user. From millennials that work differently and who are becoming a very vocal part of the workforce to end users that want to be able to access their desktop environment from anywhere at any time,” Anderson says. “The end users will ultimately win this battle so IT needs to develop a strategy of how to deliver the technology needed while staying in budget.”
Anderson told approximately 3,500 attendees atMicrosoft Management Summit 2010about Microsoft’s comprehensive desktop management strategy, which incorporates the company’svirtual desktop technology, convergingForeFront Endpoint Protectioncapabilities into the desktop management product and providing a “route to cloud” with a software-as-a-service offering dubbedWindows InTune.
To start, Anderson says a comprehensive desktop management strategy must include perspective on distributed as well as centralized desktops. IT managers must know how their end users work. Are they primarily in the office? Do they work at home? Or are they traveling most of the time? Such information will help IT managers better deliver the applications needed to the end-user desktop or client device, Anderson says.
A successful strategy will also integrate “all kinds of virtualization,” Anderson says. Microsoft announced expanding its partnership with Citrix to combine Citrix’s value of centralized desktop technology with Microsoft’s desktop management and virtualization capabilities. Another area of integration includes security capabilities previously available stand-alone in ForeFront Endpoint Protection. Anderson says the company consolidated the PC-related features such as anti-virus into System Center, enabling customers to support one infrastructure for management and security related processes on client machines.
“Our customers can retire a set of servers and dramatically reduce the costs because those ForeFront capabilities are now in Microsoft System Center,” Anderson says. “In most organizations, the team that handles anti-virus, for instance, is the same team responsible for desktop management.”
A fourth tenet in the strategy involves a “route to cloud,” which Microsoft introduced to desktop managers via Windows InTune. The SaaS offering, designed for companies with up to 500 PCs, was announced in beta, inviting customers to join the program. Now with more than 1,000 customers signed up for the beta program, Microsoft has closed the program. Windows InTune lets IT managers, via a Web-based console, access the capabilities to update and patch PCs, track software licenses, set policies and remediate problems remotely. And customers of Windows InTune can also upgrade to any version of Windows, including the popularWindows 7.
And the fifth point in Anderson’s vision for comprehensive desktop management is a laser focus on the end user.
“We are turning desktop management on its head. It is not about the device, it is about the end user. And IT managers must understand everything are the user’s working environment and move away from thinking end users are on standard devices or trusted PCs every time they connect,” he explains. “The system should assess the user environment and intelligently adapt.”
Wanted: IT case studies with a twist. Have an interesting high-tech experience that doesn’t seem to fit the standard case study mold? How has technology helped you or your client accomplish some unexpected goals?足球竞猜app软件has chronicled stories ranging from adeliberately spammed housewifeto an11-year-old network managerand we’re in search of more. Please share with me your tips on offbeat end-user experiences with high-tech tools at ddubie@nww.com.
Do you Tweet? Follow Denise Dubie on Twitterhere.