Ronni Pedersen's deployment ramblings

Sign up for a “Windows Intune Taste Test” so you can experience firsthand how Windows Intune makes PCs more productive, secure, and manageable.

http://www.newsignature.com/intune/

Friday morning I’m leaving for the Microsoft Management Summit 2012 (MMS) in Las Vegas. This is one of the biggest Management events in world for IT Pro’s. At MMS some of the most skilled IT Professionals from around the world meet to increase their technical expertise through deep hands-on technical training, sharing of best practices and interaction with innovators and pioneers in desktop and device management, datacenter, and cloud technologies.

As a Configuration Manager MVP, I’ve been looking forward to this event for past 3 or 4 years. Later this year all System Center 2012 products will be released, SQL Server 2012 is already available and Windows 8 will follow later this year. It’s really exciting.

This year my main focus will be on System Center 2012 Configuration Manager, Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2012 (MDT), PowerShell and Windows Intune. Hopefully I’ll also get time to see a session or two about the next release of System Center 2012 Service Manager. If not, you’ll be able to view any breakout sessions you may have missed within 48 hours of the live presentation. Awesome!

The Labs has always been very popular at MMS, and this year is no exception. I’m been given the honor of proctoring a few of the labs:

Tue, April 17, 04:00 pm, Venetian Ballroom B
CD-IL308 Deploying Windows 7 to Bare Metal Systems with Configuration Manager 2012

Wed, April 18, 10.15 am, Venetian Ballroom C
CD-IL307 Deploying Configuration Manager 2012

One of the great things about MMS is opportunity to meet with colleagues, customers, partners, fellow MVP’s and friends. If you want to have a chat, coffee or a beer during the event just give me a call +45 2085 9452 and I’ll arrange something.

So expect either blog silence or multiple blog posts about my week in Las Vegas. Either way I will enjoy the week…

Looking forward to see you in Las Vegas…

Microsoft said on Monday that it plans to introduce Windows Intune on March 23.

The company plans to release a 30-day trial version in more than 35 countries on March 23. Intune is Microsoft’s cloud-based PC management solution for small, medium and large enterprises and businesses. “Windows Intune builds on our history of delivering cloud services at scale, including Hotmail and Windows Update, and leverages Microsoft’s cloud experience with Azure, Dynamics CRM Online and Office 365 to give our customers the best Windows experience possible by providing the tools IT professionals need to ensure their employees can be productive and secure from virtually anywhere,” said Microsoft’s Gavriella Schuster.

Read the full story here.

You’ve properly heard about it and soon you’ll have the chance to try it out yourself. The System Center Online team has announced the upcoming beta release of System Center Online Desktop Manager, expected to be released this year. Register to be notified when the Desktop Manager beta is available here.

Here’s what will be included in the upcoming release:

• Updates Management Workload:  Manage the Microsoft updates from a web-based console.  Review available updates, choose updates and deploy to selected computers or groups of computers.  Imagine WSUS from the cloud.
• Policy Workload: Provides the ability to configure operational settings of the Windows Update and Anti-Malware agents installed on the client computers. 
• Anti-malware Workload: Review anti-malware, anti-virus status and remedial actions from the SCODM console.  Ensure managed computers have up-to-date signatures.
• Assets Workload: Collect detailed hardware and software inventory on managed computers. View this information in reports.  Use the License reconciliation feature to load your Microsoft volume license agreement information and compare installed application quantities with licensed quantities.
• Alerts Workload: Helps you quickly and easily find problems (or potential) on your computers. You can also get help on how to solve the problem or how to start troubleshooting.

For all the details see http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenteronline/archive/2009/09/23/system-center-online-desktop-manager-beta-is-coming-soon.aspx.

Enjoy!