April 4, 2012

“Park City” Coming to Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack?

By Christopher Hertz
IT Consulting and Support \ Microsoft

I was excited to hear that something new was going to be coming to the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP).  Mary-Jo Foley over on her All About Microsoft blog posted that Microsoft is adding a new virtualization component, which may go to beta this week, to its MDOP bundle of Windows business tools.  She goes on to say, “I’m hearing from my contacts that the next MDOP release will include a brand-new addition codenamed ‘Park City.’ One of my contacts described Park City as a “User Experience Virtualization” (UE-V) deliverable.”

MDOP is an incredibly powerful set of tools offered by Microsoft and it always surprises me how many people in the IT world aren’t aware of it.   MDOP is Microsoft’s swiss army knife, available as a subscription for Software Assurance customers, and includes: Diagnostics and Recovery Toolkit (DaRT),  Application Virtualization (App-V), Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V), Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM), Asset Inventory Service (AIS), BitLocker Administration and Monitoring (BLAM) and Microsoft Desktop Error Monitoring (DEM) 3.5.

UPDATE: 4/4/2012 @ 7:30pm

It is official!  From The Official MDOP Blog on TechNet Blogs, “Microsoft User Experience Virtualization and Microsoft Application Virtualization 5.0 Betas Now Available“.  Straight from the source:

We are pleased to announce that the beta versions of Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) 5.0 and a new MDOP product Microsoft User Experience Virtualization (UE-V) are now available for download from
Microsoft Connect.

UE-V is an enterprise-scale user state virtualization solution that delivers a user’s personal Windows experience across devices, is simple for IT to deploy, and easily integrates with existing management tools.

Some of the main features of UE-V are:

  • Users retain their application experience without having to reconfigure applications when they log in from a different Windows instance – regardless of whether it is a rich desktop or virtual desktop session.
  • Automatically delivers a personal experience to Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows Server 8 based devices, giving users the flexibility to work from anywhere.
  • If a user accidently applies unwanted changes, IT can simply roll back to the initial state.
  • Seamlessly integrates with Microsoft desktop virtualization products to roam the user experience in heterogeneous environments.

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