Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit

What’s New

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 5.0 includes the following new features for simplified IT infrastructure planning:

• Heterogeneous IT environment inventory
• Software usage tracking for Windows Server, SharePoint Server, System Center Configuration Manager, Exchange Server, and SQL Server
• Microsoft Office 2010 readiness assessment
• SQL Server discovery and assessment for consolidation
• Windows 2000 migration assessment

                         
Figure: Three Key Functions of Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit

Secure and Agentless Inventory

MAP provides secure, agentless, and network-wide inventory that scales from small business to large enterprises. It collects and organizes system resources and device information from a single networked computer. Assessment tools often require users to first deploy software agents on all computers to be inventoried, but this tool does not. MAP uses technologies already available in your IT environment to perform inventory and assessments. These technologies include Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), the Remote Registry Service, Active Directory Domain Services, and the Computer Browser service.

You can use MAP to inventory the following technologies:

• Windows 7
• Windows Vista
• Windows XP Professional
• Office 2010 and previous versions
• Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2
• Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2003 R2
• Windows 2000 Professional or Windows 2000 Server
• VMware ESX
• VMware ESXi
• VMware Server
• Linux variants
• LAMP application stack discovery
• SQL Server 2008

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