Microsoft yesterday announced the release of a beta for its Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP) version 8.0. MAP is Microsofts capacity planning tool, which it releases for free as a so called solution accelerator. MAP uses Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), Active Directory, SMS Provider, and other technologies to collect data in your environment and inventories computer hardware, software, and operating systems in small or large IT environments without installing any agent software on the target computers.
Version 8.0 will focus on assessment for environment readiness for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. Key features provided in this release are:
- Readiness assessment for Windows 8
- Readiness assessment for Windows Server 2012
- Readiness assessment for Office 2013
- Migration planning to Windows Azure VMs
- Tracking of Lync Enterprise/Plus users
The beta can be downloaded from Microsoft Connect.