Microsoft is enhancing its efforts to provide assistance to enterprise customers in order to deal with the barriers involved by the deployment of Windows Vista. As Microsoft's latest operating system is scheduled for availability via volume licenses come November 30, 2006, the Redmond Company has debuted the Windows Vista Compatibility Factory and is also making available the Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0.

"The application compatibility team passed a major milestone as they posted the release candidate of the Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) 5.0 on the web for download. ACT 5.0 RC is an all in one tool to help IT pros collect, analyze and share application compatibility information. I think that the cool thing about ACT is that it is based on requirements from our IT Pros and is intended to make their lives easier. It helps scope the work that needs to be done in an enterprise, to ensure they are strategically investing their time," revealed Alex Heaton, Windows Vista Security engineer.

Microsoft promised to take ACT out of beta in preparation for the RTM release of Windows Vista and they delivered.

"By providing a single place that shows Microsoft's test results, alongside reports from the ISVs and other IT Pros, ACT 5.0 makes it simple to find the areas that need focus within the enterprise. ACT 5.0 RC also has compatibility evaluators to detect the common application compatibility issues that LOB and other applications might have on Windows Vista," added Heaton.