Microsoft’s new Windows 10 readiness tool

Microsoft’s massive anniversary update for users who have already upgraded to Windows 10 began rolling out August 2nd. But Microsoft has also been quietly working on a tool to help enterprise customers who haven’t migrated to Windows 10 make more informed decisions about whether their systems are ready for the new operating system. Windows 10 adoption is one of Microsoft’s top priorities, and there is no space as critical to the company as the enterprise desktop.

Enterprise systems have a number of requirements that go far beyond those of the home PC user. Security is critical, as is management and compatibility. A new tool from Microsoft, known as Upgrade Analytics, was released on July 22 in preview mode. This tool is a component of the Microsoft Operations Management Suite, also known as OMS. This is Microsoft’s cloud-based IT management solution that helps companies manage and protect infrastructure both onsite and in any cloud services they use.

Discover apps, discover drivers

The Upgrade Analytics tool allows for a thorough evaluation of the application and driver ecosystem. Depending on the sensitivity of the environment in question, this kind of information can provide rapid relevance and critical validation of the ability to upgrade a base of systems to Windows 10. Organizations should take the extra precaution of utilizing this tool as only one of many Win10_Upgrade_Analytics_tool2metrics of validation for upgrading. Business-critical and sensitive applications should still be validated on upgraded systems and tested as fully as possible.

One of the most valuable elements of the tool is the ability to rapidly conduct an inventory of all applications and drivers within an organization. In an environment that may implement different types of data and contain dozens, if not hundreds, of applications and versions, this information is valuable in many ways. Even with a glancing look at all accounted-for applications, sorting out a validation plan for OS upgrades can be achieved much easier.

Push to Windows 10

Microsoft’s idea behind this is to urge organizations to implement moving to Windows 10. By putting a significant amount of knowledge before the organization about various elements of the workstation environment, the organization can begin to formulate mitigation plans and migration strategies.

The Upgrade Analytics tools is an add-on element for existing OMS workspaces, but non-OMS customers have the option to easily deploy a new OMS instance with the toolset enabled. The tool is free at some tiers of service.

Photo credit: Microsoft

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