Windows 7 Deployment Tools Interview with Jeremy Chapman, Part 1
A few days ago, my colleague Jeremy Chapman from the Windows Client product management team, was interviewed by Stephen Rose on the many Windows 7 deployment tools that Microsoft teams are developing for customers interested in adopting Windows 7 .
Here's a short snippet of his interview.
...now on to a discussion on Windows 7, and what you’ll want to know as you begin looking at your application portfolio and deployment tools.
We recently sat down with Jeremy Chapman, Senior Product Manager responsible for deployment and application compatibility tools for the IT Pro, to get a sense of how these tools change with Windows 7.
--Stephen Rose, Senior Community Manager, Windows Client Division
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Stephen: Jeremy, can you tell us a little about your job here at Microsoft?
Jeremy: I look after the tools that customers use to deploy operating systems, spanning everything from assessing their current hardware and applications – with tools like the Application Compatibility Toolkit – to building system images, migration user data and automating operating system and application installations.
Stephen: Now that Windows 7 beta is out and lots of people are starting to download and test the software the big Stephen people are asking is, “How different will Windows 7 deployment be from Windows Vista?”
Jeremy: The good news is that all the big architectural changes we made in Windows Vista continue to live on—such as componentizing the OS for offline serviceability, releasing what used to be the OEM-specific tools in the OEM Pre-installation Kit (OPK) to customers in the form of the Windows Automated Installation (AIK), and with things like Windows PE and ImageX, and all the tools we built to augment deployments. For people who know Windows Vista deployment, the changes moving to Windows 7 will be incremental and easy to get ramped-up on, with improvements made across the deployment spectrum.
Stephen: What about Hardware? Will customers need new hardware to run Windows 7?
Jeremy: We are taking our engineering tenet seriously that hardware running Windows Vista well will run also Windows 7 as well.
Stephen: Great. I use Windows 7 on my old Windows Vista hardware and love it. It sounds like most of what people have done to prepare for or deploy Windows Vista will carry forward. So what about additional features and functionally … Are there enhancements to the deployment process that IT pros will want to know about?
Jeremy: Everything from imaging, to image delivery, to migration improves with Windows 7, as do the toolkits like the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit , Application Compatibility Toolkit , Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and Volume Activation tools .
[CLICK HERE for the entire interview on TechNet Springboard]
Enjoy,
Baldwin Ng | Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit | www.microsoft.com/MAP