Download Free Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 6.0 RTM

Microsoft has released the latest iteration of a toolkit designed to streamline the migration to technologies such as Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and Internet Explorer 9.

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 6.0 was released to manufacturing and is now available for download from the software giant free of charge.

But MAP Toolkit 6.0 covers a range of products beyond IE9 and Windows 7 RTM and SP1. As of version 6.0, the solution has evolved with new capabilities tailored to an emerging computing paradigm, the Cloud.

“The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 6.0 includes assessment capabilities to evaluate workloads for both public and private cloud platforms. With MAP 6.0, organizations now have the ability to identify workloads and estimate the infrastructure size and resources needed for both Windows Azure and Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track,” revealed Microsoft’s Stephen L Rose.

“Also, new to MAP 6.0, is an Office 365 client assessment, enhanced VMware inventory, and Oracle schema discovery and reporting. Expanded assessment and discovery capabilities from MAP help organizations simplify planning for their next migration project.”

Some customers might be familiar with previous versions of the MAP Toolkit and I’ll think they’ll agree with me when I say that version 6.0 offers the most comprehensive support of both proprietary and third-party technologies out of all previous releases.

The software giant has shown time and again that it understands the need of its customers to run heterogeneous environment, and making MAP Toolkit 6.0 play nice with VMware Server, vSphere and VMware vCenter in addition to Hyper-V reflects the company’s position.

Another similar example is the support of MySQL, Oracle, and Sybase instances on top of SQL Servers. Of course, ultimately, Microsoft is trying to win over customers to its own technologies, but this doesn’t stop customers from taking advantage of the new inventory capabilities of MAP Toolkit 6.0 as they see fit.

And with Office 365 launched worldwide recently, customers thinking of embracing Microsoft’s Cloud productivity suite can leverage MAP Toolkit 6.0 to help them with the transition.

“MAP 6.0 includes an Office 365 client assessment which evaluates the compatibility of Office suites deployed in their environment with Office 365, via a hardware and software readiness assessment,” Rose added.

“This assessment helps organizations quickly determine which client computers in their environment are ready to use Office 365. The tool obtains machine level detail about why a given computer is not capable of using Office 365, and identifies whether the Office suites currently being used in your environment are compatible with Office 365.”

Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 6.0 RTM is available for download here.