Microsoft has launched updates to a set of tools that help
administrators reduce the time it takes to deploy the Windows XP
operating system.The improved tools, Windows XP Application
Compatibility Toolkit 2.6 and the Line Security Analyser, are part
of the company's New Desktop Deployment Portal website.
"Application compatibility is one of the
primary concerns of enterprises currently evaluating the deployment
of Windows XP," said Michael Silver, vice-president and research
director at analyst Gartner. "It is not uncommon for enterprises to
have hundreds or even thousands of applications to test for
compatibility before deploying a new operating system," he
said.
"We are turning the crank faster on a series
of deployment tools as well as pulling together a lot of
information users can find in one place on the website. The
improvements to the Security Analyser help it check for Exchange
5.5 and Windows Media Code and to pick up on changes made by
[Windows XP] Service Pack 1,'' said Rogers Weed, Microsoft's
corporate vice-president in charge of Windows product
management.
Microsoft is also planning to make the
website-based tools available through a CD-Rom called the Desktop
Deployment Customer Toolkit CD.
Microsoft hopes the compatibility testing it
did in preparation for the release of Windows NT code to users will
cut down on the testing users will have to do with Windows XP, he
added.
"Application compatibility testing is a major
step in deployment for a lot of enterprise users. But what some
people may not realise is the huge amount of testing we had to do
on XP in order to release the NT code base to a broad set of users.
That actually generated a lot of benefit for line of business apps
and enterprise issues as well," Weed said.
In an attempt to back up that claim, Microsoft
officials pointed to a study recently released by BearingPoint, in
which Microsoft had evaluated nine companies with more than 800
applications using the toolkit. Results of the study showed that
Windows XP was compatible with about 95% of applications already
deployed.
Microsoft's next step, according to Weed, will
be to improve the tool's ability to check an entire network for all
existing applications and to pull them into a central database
where they can be checked against Microsoft's own central database
of all the applications that the company has ever analysed.
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