Microsoft: Windows 8 for business

At TechEd, North America, Microsoft Corp. detailed the value Windows 8 brings to businesses through enhanced fundamentals, new enterprise features and strong application compatibility on June 12. The company also announced updates to several Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) products to help organizations manage, secure and enhance the Windows experience. “Windows 8 is enterprise-ready by design,” said Antoine Leblond, corporate vice president for Windows Web Services at Microsoft. “Adding features that bring new possibilities in mobility, productivity and security, Windows 8 will delight developers, IT professionals and the employees they support.” Now available for download are updates to several MDOP products, which enable organizations to virtualize, manage and restore data, applications and users’ experiences on Windows: • The beta for Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM) 2.0 makes it easier for enterprises to protect data with BitLocker and BitLocker To Go by using Windows 8 support to simplify the provisioning process, monitoring and enforcing compliance for improved security, and reducing the cost of managing an encrypted environment by integrating with existing managements systems, while empowering users to support themselves with a self-service recovery portal. A download of the beta is available at http://www.microsoft.com/getMBAM. • Both the Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM) 4.0 Service Pack 1 beta and release candidate for the Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) 8 are available today, providing support for Windows 8 Release Preview. The download of AGPM beta is available here, and the download of the DaRT 8 release candidate is available here. • The second beta for User Experience Virtualization (UE-V) also will be available by the end of the month. UE-V is designed to give individuals the ability to change their device and keep their experience without reconfiguring applications or settings in Windows 7 or Windows 8. New features in the second beta include roaming system settings between Windows 7 and Windows 8; support for additional operating system settings, like Start menu, Taskbar and folder options; Group Policy support to ensure agent configuration consistency; and the roaming and sync of settings between Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10.