Windows 8 Has a Lot to Offer to Business Users, Microsoft Says

During the second day of its TechEd North America 2012 conference in Orlando, Florida, Microsoft detailed some of the benefits and enhancements that Windows 8 is set to deliver when compared to what previous flavors of the platform had to offer.

Microsoft also discussed the features that Windows 8 packs for business customers, such as strong application compatibility and a new series of enterprise-oriented capabilities.

Additionally, the company announced the availability of updated several Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) products aimed at enabling simple management, security and enhancement of 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.”

Among the aforementioned updated products, we can count a beta flavor of the Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM) 2.0, along with and RC of Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT), and User Experience Virtualization (UE-V) beta 2.

The beta for Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM) 2.0 was designed to make it easier for enterprises to protect data with BitLocker and BitLocker To Go in Windows 8.

It can deliver a simpler provisioning process, monitoring and enforcing compliance for improved security, while also being capable of reducing the cost of managing an encrypted environment. It can be downloaded from Microsoft’s website today.

The release candidate of Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) is accompanied by a beta flavor of Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM) 4.0 Service Pack 1, both of which were released with support for Windows 8 Release Preview. They can be found at Microsoft here and here, respectively.

As for the second beta of the User Experience Virtualization (UE-V), it is meant to become available at the end of the month, enabling users to change devices and keep settings and applications while moving from Windows 7 to 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,” Microsoft explains.

Windows 8 Release Preview is available for download from Softpedia as well, via this link.