If you are not on Microsoft's Windows Vista map put together in Virtual Earth, then you don't really matter much to the Redmond company. And yes, that's right, Microsoft has built a map of Windows Vista deployments and integrated it on top of its Virtual Earth platform. Enter the tropic of Vista, or is it a pole? It doesn't really matter, Vista is spread across the globe independent of longitude and latitude, well, not so much when it comes to latitude. Still, the Windows Vista and Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) customers around the world map is a resource designed to show first hand examples of corporate customers having deployed the company's latest Windows client.

"Need a visual on some of the customers deploying Windows Vista? The Windows Vista and Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) Customers Around the World map highlights some of the existing Windows Vista and MDOP customers across the globe. This interactive map allows you to click on different countries to view some of the existing Windows Vista and MDOP customers around the world. See how companies in different industries and locations are investing in Windows Vista", reads an invitation from Microsoft.

The map, coincidentally or not, comes on the heels of two reports from Forrester and King Research claiming that although Windows Vista adoption will increase in 2008, the operating system's overall uptake in the corporate environment will still be low. On November 12, in Barcelona, Spain at the TechEd IT Forum 2007, Microsoft introduced the new beta for Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5, Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) 6.0 and Microsoft Asset Inventory Service (AIS) 1.0, all parts of its Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack details.

Concomitantly, the company informed that MDOP is nothing short of a best seller, the package containing resources designed explicitly to streamline the migration to Vista in the corporate environment. "More than 3 million licenses for the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) for Software Assurance have been sold since it was made available to Microsoft Software Assurance customers in January 2007", Microsoft claimed at that time.