Major Facelift Planed for Windows Vista Hardware Assessment

Microsoft is planning a major facelift for Windows Vista Hardware Assessment. The tool released on a parallel trajectory to Windows Vista and the Office 2007 System is a solution accelerator designed to streamline the migration of the latest versions of Microsoft's flagship products. With version 2.1 unveiled in late August 2007, and with an update shipped in mid November, the Redmond company is now looking ahead, and promising a major update for the product. In this context, Windows Vista Hardware Assessment will transform into the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator.

"It's been a little bit over 2 months since Windows Vista Hardware Assessment 2.1 (WVHA) [was] release[d] back in August. You may wonder what our dev team is up to. Well, aside from getting the much needed rest, we have been busy working on the NEXT version of the tool. Yes, we're talking about a major expansion here. For those of you who haven't heard of WVHA, it's basically a network-wide readiness assessment tool that goes out to your network and securely assess each PC for their hardware and device compatibility for Windows Vista and 2007 Microsoft Office migration", revealed Baldwin Ng, Sr. Product Manager for the Microsoft Solution Accelerators Core Engineering Team.

The rechristening of the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment as the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator is a clear indication that the future version of the tool will have a much larger scope than its predecessor had. While WVHS was essentially focused on Vista and Office 2007, Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator will also cover Windows Server 2008, Windows Server Virtualization, Terminal Services, SoftGrid and System Center Virtual Machine Manager. The beta program for MAP is already live and can be accessed through this link.

"This expansion will not only retain the original WVHA functionalities and the 7-language localization, but it will also incorporate many elements for the Windows Server 2008 wave and Microsoft Integrated Virtualization initiative. Imagine having the same agent-less inventory capabilities to survey the IT infrastructure of servers, applications and workstations and get back a series of assessment reports in an hour or two", Baldwin Ng added.