Just in case you missed it, Microsoft released the Microsoft Office 2010 Deployment Kit for App-V which will is required for sequencing and deploying Office 2010 client products with Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V).
The toolkit must be installed on the App-V sequencing station prior to monitoring the Office 2010 client installation, and on the client machines to which virtualized Office 2010 client packages will be deployed.
I am sure as to why do I need to deploy an additional application to deploy a virtual application, as I think it defeats the purpose of virtualized apps, but if you know – please leave a comment!
If you have been using the Beta versions of the Office 2010 WebApps as of yesterday – you are in the company of 400 million friends!
Yes – in a very unexpected announcement, Microsoft and Facebook made available http://docs.com – which allows Facebook users to collaborate using Office 2010 Web Apps.
Now you can discover, create, and share Microsoft Office documents with your Facebook friends. Built using Microsoft Office 2010 – Docs for Facebook lets you work from just about anywhere with the familiar Office experience.
IMHO, this is a very significant move by Microsoft to finally level off the lead Google Docs had in the marketplace.
What I do not understand is why Facebook? Yes it has 400 million users, but I think it is mostly used for personal social connections. The people I know, including me, do not want to combine true friends and business connections. - What’s up with that?
The beta version of Windows Intune is now in full beta.
Windows Intune simplifies how businesses manage and secure PCs using Windows cloud services and Windows 7—so your computers and users can operate at peak performance. Windows Intune delivers cloud-based management and security capabilities that can be administered through a single Web-based console, enabling your end users and your IT staff to work from virtually anywhere-all that’s required is an Internet connection.
Although this is not new, it was called System Center Online Desktop Management – it is now officially part of the Microsoft Online Services and named Windows Intune.
“Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.” – Theodore Logan.
In this case it would be at the “Circle M” – strange and cool things. I downloaded and installed XP Mode onto my Windows 7 RC 1 base image on my laptop – a Dell Latitude D820 Core 2 Duo with 4 gigs of ram – hardware virtualization was already turned on in the bios which is needed. XP Mode works hand in hand with Windows Virtual PC which I also needed to install. Windows Virtual PC looks to be more of a fully integrated app than Virtual PC 2007 was. If someone finds the UI for Windows Virtual PC let me know. Gone is Virtual PC 2007’s UI collection of virtual pc’s. You can launch from the vmcx file or from the Start/All Programs/Windows Virtual PC folder.
The UI around a Windows Virtual PC instance now includes USB options and Ctrl+Alt+del on the toolbar. On the physical side in the Start/Program menu Windows Virtual PC builds shortcuts for the virtual OS instances and virtual apps for you to call on.
When you open the Virtual Machines folder and right click on a .vmcx file you have mouse menu option for “settings”.
I purposefully looked for and found an app that runs on XP but not on Windows 7 – a really old version of CoolEdit – that was a “cool” wav editor program back in the day. I verified that it wouldn’t launch on Windows 7. I copied the install folder to the Windows XP virtual instance then copied a shortcut to the All Users folder. This version of CoolEdit is a true headless app with no registry or installer files – it runs out of the folder – kind of like an, ahem, a Mac program. Win 3.0 did that too.
The Shortcut showed up on the physical laptop after I put it in the All Users folder in the virtual XP OS. I shut the virtual XP instance down then was able to launch the icon from my laptops Start menu.
After launch the app looks like a locally installed app without a border or a VirtualPC wrapper around it. So that works – works really well.
The next thing I did was to install the App-V application virtualization client into the same virtual XP instance that CoolEdit was being launched from in stand alone mode – no management server. I then sequenced a fun app called BlingClock Timer. A Java based app that has a digital clock face that can be set to count down to zero. The app requires Java so it was a fun exercise to stream an app to physical PC that neither has Java or the App-V client physically installed to it.
I selected the Create MSI check box in the App-V sequencer to add an MSI installer and XML manifest file to the App-V file output folder. I copied the completed sequenced app to the virtual XP instance and ran the MSI which fully caches the App-V app to 100%. I then copied the BlingClock icon to the All Users folder which immediately puts it on the physical computer. I closed the virtual XP instance and launched BlingClock from the physical computers Start menu Icon – what do you know? The App-V notification tray status bar showed up and BlinkClock presented itself on the desktop. A virtual app being “streamed” from a XP Mode virtual PC down to a physical PC – a poor man’s virtual streaming environment.
So why add what seems to be a layer of complexity to XP Mode? Because its freakin’ cool that you can do it, that’s why. No, the reason is to extend any previously App-V sequenced apps. If you’ve been following the MDOP Med-V news – you can install apps into a virtual XP instance and deliver that XP instance hidden and expose the icons to the physical PC from a Med-V streaming server. The XP OS is used but not visible to the enduser who launches the icon. With XP Mode on Windows 7 you can place the must have programs into an XP sandbox – without a backend server to do the heavy lifting and keep it clean of installed apps.
Another compelling reason for XP Mode is side by side IE browsers of different versions. CompuCom partners with and supports a broad spectrum of clients – the medical community seems to have a fair amount of web based apps that are grounded in IE 6 visa vie XP Pro. With XP Mode on Windows 7 you can now have your low sodium, trans fat free snack derivatives and eat them, too.
If your looking for another vector for appcompat you may have found it. Rather than placing an app in a stand alone version of XP Pro because it won’t run on anything else or you can’t upgrade your entire enterprise because of a handful of IE6 apps that won’t run on anything else I’d check out XP Mode on Windows 7.
Two years after being acquired, the Calista team and product set are finally coming out for air!
The upcoming version of Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 will incorporate the RemoteFX – a set of RDP technologies which will vastly improve the user experience when accessing remote sessions – most prominently graphics virtualization.
The list of partners supporting RemoteFX is growing but it already includes the big ones: AMD, AppliedMicro, Citrix, Cloudium Systems, Dell, DevonIT, HP, Nvidia, Quest, Texas Instruments, ThinLinx, Via, Wondermedia and Wyse.
(Side note: Terminal Services is being renamed to Session Virtualization Environment)
Spiceworks develops a desktop software suite that helps a company’s IT staff collaborate with each other and manage “everything IT.” The IT management software, which is free and ad-supported, is currently being used by 850,000 IT professionals at small to medium businesses in 196 countries to inventory, monitor, troubleshoot, report on and run a help desk for their IT networks. Currently more than 25 percent of all businesses with greater than 100 employees rely on Spiceworks to manage part of their IT operations.
The compelling part of Spicework’s software is that it includes a social network for IT pros that they use to help each other out that includes a crowdsourcing troubleshooting platform. Its product roadmap is visible to all members, who can vote on which features they want to see next. The application features a network map that visually shows every computer and network device on a company’s IT network, along with their relationships and bandwidth consumption.
Spiceworks also recently added a host of plug-ins and social media widgets, letting users keep track track of alerts, tickets, new software, and new hardware, as well as inventory summaries. Spiceworks also lets users add themes and skins to the desktop, create customized user portals, and lets users drop in news widgets from RSS feeds and social networking widgets for Twitter, Digg, Facebook, and MySpace
Spiceworks gives its software away for free, and makes money from advertising and in-app purchases of IT products and services.
This is a thought-provoking article from LORI MACVITTIE on SOAWorld Magazinethat poses an interesting point-of-view:
…the US postal service doesn’t determine whether postage may be due or not until the package arrives at its destination. If the addressee isn’t willing/able to pay that postage due, the package is of course returned via the delivery service, which incurs round-trip costs of transportation and handling at every point along the way.
If this sounds anything like your application infrastructure architecture, then you might want to reconsider how you’re handling the delivery of applications and where you’re applying policies that may affect the delivery process.
There are tons of inefficiencies in every IT organization (not yours, of course!) but what this article sparks in the mind is that sometimes, it’s necessary to examine the whole structure – end-to-end, and to work toward a design in your vision, especially in the most taxing of areas: application delivery.
Too often, apps live in a vacuum in terms of how they are supported and connected on the back-end, but live together in the minds of their users. We do stuff to data before considering workflow: as MacVitte points out –
Why apply compression to data on the application server when that data may need to be examined by other components in the architecture on the way back to the user and may, in fact, degrade performance rather than improve it? Why not apply compression at the last point possible; at the strategic control point that sits between your infrastructure and the “rest of the world”, i.e. the user and their network. Why are requests not examined at the first possible strategic point of control for validity? Why allow what is potentially a dangerous and malicious request pass through the infrastructure so it can be processed by every component in the architecture and potentially wreak havoc throughout the data center? Why not examine the request at the first possible point and accept or reject it before the costs associated with that processing and the risks are incurred by the organization?
Completely engaging read, and worth passing around at that next Steering Committee meeting.
One of our colleagues sent us a highly bookmarkable list of Win7 resources that’s definitely worth checking out. There’s great stuff on Deployment, USMT 4.0, etc.
Before SP2, policy download was queued locally for 2 minutes before processing
This 2 minute delay has been removed in Service Pack 2
More efficient software distribution configured to run at user logon
Before SP2, user policy requests were not downloaded for 10 minutes after user logon event
This caused a delay in User/Group targeted advertisements
A common scenario is an App-V distribution environment where User or Security Group targeting is used
This 10 minute delay has been removed in Service Pack 2
User or Security Group targeted advertisements are instantly available after user logon in Service Pack 2
Can I get an AMEN? Someone at Microsoft needs to be on the tower shouting this out to the masses. Since Redmond is not, I will! Albeit, my tower is a bit smaller but none the less I’M SHOUTING!!!
I can’t tell you how many MDOP POC’s I’ve done where the client wants to use SCCM to deliver App-V packages but has already seen the almost immediate delivery of App-V Management Server App-V packages and wanted to know why SCCM can’t do that. It can now. Just about fills my holiday wish list. Well, there is the hope of bringing back Zero Touch for App-V self provisioning of pre-approved App-V applications and the ability to make request to a manager for apps the user needs but doesn’t have. I can wait.
One of the other items that sort of sticks out is this one –
SMS 2003, time to migrate
Mainstream Support ends Jan 2010 What does that mean?
No-charge Problem Resolution Support ends
We no longer accept product design change requests (DCRs) or provide new feature functionality
We no longer provide new non-security hotfixes without enrollment in Extended Hotfix Support
Sort of? You know how not so good financial and political news is made available to the public at 3 pm on a Friday? That’s what this feels like to all the folks that got their SMS 2003 environments up and running and had to do so from how to we say this, a not so well tuned previous SMS product of whose vintage will not be named here. While you were enjoying your “feast induced drowsiness” you get this update about end of support for SMS 2003. I hope you’re awake now.
In preparation for SCCM you might entertain propping a parallel Windows 2008 Server to then install SCCM SP2 R2 into for a migration instead of an upgrade to SMS. This is one of our preferred method at CompuCom. Taking a deployment approach by department you can remove the older SMS clients and seed by ‘collections of computers’ from SCCM that receive the new SCCM client thereby keeping SMS 2003 up while the migration is in progress until the last device has been migrated.
Plan now folks – before you make that SMS 2003 support call and are asked where to bill the call to.
