Author: jay f

Today the Springboard site went live with content about windows 8 !!!!!

This is the go to site for Information about windows 8. The site has content  about the following subjects

• Windows 8 Consumer Preview Product Guide
  Download a detailed guide to the new and improved features in Windows 8 including AppLocker, BitLocker, Windows To Go, measured boot, and Client Hyper-V.
• Windows To Go Technical Overview
  Learn how Windows To Go can help you provide users with bootable USB storage devices containing a copy of Windows 8, along with their business apps, data, and settings.
• Frequently Asked Questions: Managing the Windows Store
  Get answers to frequently asked questions about managing end user access to, and usage of, the Windows Store within your organization.
• The Windows 8 User Experience
  Learn more about application, Web, and cloud features for end users.
• Windows 8 Consumer Preview Technical Forums
  Get help with questions on installation go here

To learn more  go http://technet.microsoft.com/windows/windows-8.

Essential Downloads

• Windows 8 Consumer Preview
• Windows 8 Consumer Preview Product Guide
• Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit is an agentless, automated, multi-product planning and assessment tool for quicker and easier desktop and server migrations. MAP provides detailed readiness assessment reports and executive proposals with extensive hardware and software information, and actionable recommendations to help organizations accelerate their IT infrastructure planning process, and gather more detail on assets that reside within their current environment. MAP also provides private and public cloud planning assessments, and server utilization data for Hyper-V server virtualization planning; identifying server placements, and performing virtualization candidate assessments, including ROI analysis for server consolidation with Hyper-V. Other significant new features in MAP 6.5 include the discovery of active Windows devices, Software Usage Tracking for Forefront Endpoint Protection (FEP), and the discovery of Oracle instances on Itanium-based servers with HP-UX to assist in the planning of migration to SQL Server. Learn more.
MAP is one of the tools provided by the Microsoft Solution Accelerators team. The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit, Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, and Security Compliance Manager provide tested guidance and automated tools to help organizations plan, securely deploy, and manage new Microsoft technologies—easier, faster, and at less cost. All are freely available, and fully-supported by Microsoft. Learn more.
For home users and users with a few computers to migrate, use the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor to understand the readiness of your computer for Windows 7.
The MAP Toolkit includes the following components:

• Microsoft_Assessment_and_Planning_Toolkit_Setup.exe. Installation package containing the tool, release notes, Getting Started Guide and toolkit help (chm file).
• readme_en.htm. Available as a separate download. Provides information to read before installing the MAP Toolkit, including installation prerequisites and known issues.
• Getting_Started_Guide.en.doc. Provides information about toolkit installation, environment preparation, and assessment scenarios supported by toolkit wizards and the UI.
• MAP_Training_Kit.zip. Available as a separate download. Contains sample databases and training materials.
• MAP_Sample_Documents.zip. Available as a separate download. Contains sample reports and proposals.

To learn more go here.

This is a Microsoft article copied and posted here.

Join the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2012 Beta 2
New features and enhancements make large-scale desktop and server deployments smoother than ever. For System Center Configuration Manager customers, MDT 2012 Beta 2 provides an improved, extensible wizard and designer for customizing deployment questions. Existing MDT users will find more reliability and flexibility with the many small enhancements and bug fixes, and a smooth and simple upgrade process.

To find out more click here

On April 8, 2014, security patches and hotfixes for all versions of Windows XP will no longer be available. This means that, after this date, PCs running Windows XP will be vulnerable to security threats. In addition, many third party software providers are not planning to extend support for their applications running on Windows XP, which translates to even more complexity, risk, and ultimately, added management cost for your IT department if you are still managing Windows XP environments. Explore your options with this blog post from the Springboard Series and download the Windows XP End Of Support Countdown Gadget to help remind you about this important milestone.

Cross post from Microsoft

Microsoft Certified Career Conference

Day 1, March 14, 2012
Start 6:00AM – End 6:00PM Pacific Time
(What time is that in my time zone?)
Day 2, March 15, 2012
Start 6:00AM – End 6:00PM Pacific Time
(What time is that in my time zone?)

This event is free of charge!

CONFERENCE SESSIONS include:

Microsoft Official Courses
Technical sessions for IT professionals, developers, and Office power users, excerpted from Microsoft Official courses, delivered by Microsoft Certified Trainers.
Super Cert Me!
Ready for your certification exam? Find out in these exam preparation sessions.
Career Essentials
Learn how to find and land the right job. Sessions include interviewing skills, resume writing, and more.
People and Technology
Discover how cloud computing, unified communications, and other new technologies can change the way your team works
Opportunity Knocks
New technologies bring new business opportunities. Explore what’s coming next and learn how to get in on the ground floor.
The 60 Minute Rock Star
Learn Office tips and tricks to boost your productivity and impress your colleagues.
A Day in the Life
Thinking about a new role in IT? Real IT professionals, developers and managers tell you what their jobs are really like.

This is a Post from Microsoft I thought would be interest to you

• System Center 2012 Configuration Manager RC provides comprehensive configuration management for the Microsoft platform that can help you empower users with the devices and applications they need to be productive while maintaining corporate compliance and control.
   
• System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection RC, built on System Center Configuration Manager, provides industry-leading threat detection of malware and exploits as part of a unified infrastructure for managing client security and compliance that can help you simplify and improve endpoint protection.
• System Center Operations Manager 2012 RC provides deep application diagnostics and infrastructure monitoring that can help you ensure the predictable performance and availability of vital applications and offers a comprehensive view of your datacenter, private, and public clouds.
• System Center Data Protection Manager 2012 Beta provides unified data protection for Windows servers and clients that can help you deliver scalable, manageable, and cost-effective protection and restore scenarios from disk, tape, and off premise.
• System Center Orchestrator 2012 RC provides orchestration, integration, and automation of IT processes through the creation of runbooks that can help you to define and standardize best practices and improve operational efficiency.
• System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 RC provides virtual machine management and services deployment with support for multi-hypervisor environments that can help you deliver a flexible and cost effective private cloud environment.
• System Center App Controller 2012 Beta provides a common self-service experience across private and public clouds that can help you empower application owners to easily build, configure, deploy, and manage new services.
• System Center Service Manager 2012 Beta provides flexible self-service experiences and standardized datacenter processes that can help you integrate people, workflows, and knowledge across enterprise infrastructure and applications.

Go Here

This is a link to a groups of resource about Microsoft Virtualization articles and videos.

Topics include

Deploy a private cloud infrastructure

SharePoint Virtualization

Virtualize Exchange 2010

Manage Storage Migration with Virtualization

Run 3-D Applications on Hyper-V Remote Clients

Use Virtual Clustering to Deliver High-Availability Applications

Disaster Recovery Using Virtualization

Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track Program
Download Microsoft Hyper-V Cloud Reference Architecture Technical White Paper.

Private Cloud Concepts
Consult the Microsoft Private Cloud team blog for advance about building your private cloud and virtualization projects.

Choose your Private Cloud Components
Learn what Microsoft products are available for private cloud solutions and how to combine them.

Microsoft Virtualization Learning Snack
Take an interactive tour of Hyper-V and Integrated Virtualization from Microsoft.

Using Smart Cards in Windows Virtual PC
Learn how you can use smartcards in any virtual machine (VM) created using Windows Virtual PC on Windows 7, just as you use smartcards on Windows 7. While each type of smartcard device comes with its own device driver software, that will need to be installed in the operating system (OS) on which the smartcard reader is being used, smartcards can be shared between the host OS (Windows 7) and the VM, or can be assigned exclusively to VMs.

Cross Post From Microsoft

Cross Post From Microsoft

SQL Server 2012 Release Candidate (RC) is now  will extend beyond traditional database capabilities with a cloud-ready information platform.

With AlwaysOn availability for faster failover and greater hardware utilization and in-memory ColumnStore for 10x the data warehouse performance gains. SQL Server 2012 will also enable breakthrough insights with business intelligence solutions such as Power View for stunning, interactive data visualizations and enhancements to PowerPivot. Lastly, SQL Server 2012 will uniquely support hybrid IT environments with common management and development tools, scale elastically, and extend applications directly to the cloud through SQL Azure.

To Download go HERE

To learn more about SQL Server 2012 , including

SQL Server 2012 Editions and Licensing FAQ

SQL Server AlwaysOn Video

SQL Server Column StoreI ndex

SQL Server 2012 Security

SQL Server 2012 Overview

go here