Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack 2014 released

Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack 2014 has been released. The latest version of Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP), the desktop virtualization and management toolset from Microsoft; was released for download yesterday. MDOP 2014 is a suite of desktop management solutions that provides three virtualization tools- application virtualization, User Experience Virtualization and Enterprise Desktop Virtualization.

Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack 2014

The highlight of MDOP 2014 is the new and updated management tool MBAM 2.5 succeeding MBAM 2.0 Service Pack 1 released with MDOP 2013. MBAM is a tool for monitoring, implementing and managing BitLocker drive encryption of an organization from a central location. An agent is installed on every computer of the organization and the administrative console can be accessed using a web browser.

Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring tool (MBAM) 2.5 brings some new and expedient features to BitLocker Management Solution.

The new MBAM 2.5 release includes a few improvements like-

• Enhanced support for Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2.
• Improved compliance and enforcement policies.
• Support for enterprise scenarios and topologies.

“MBAM 2.5 now includes automatic encryption enforcement, provides grace periods for encryption postponement and it can now enforce the use of strong PINs,” says, Microsoft Senior Director Stella Chernyak.

Along with the MDOP 2014 release, Microsoft also announced an update for Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) 5.0 SP2. The update includes many innovations focused on virtualized desktop scenarios.

“This update includes a number of significant product innovations focusing on virtualized desktop scenarios. We have also published new guidance on tuning and sizing your virtualized application infrastructure along with detailed descriptions of the App-V client internals” says Chernyak in her blog post.

The significant improvements in App-V include-

• Improvements to application publishing with enhanced user profile technology.
• The updated App-V supports parallel application deployment scenarios allowing the organizations to test their upgraded virtualized applications while retaining access to the original virtualized app on the same device.
• Improvements to existing capabilities, package conversion enhancements and support for a VFS write mode sequencer setting.
• New deployment performance guides to help users learning, testing, deploy and optimizing App-V.

You can use MDOP 2014 and help your organizations maximize the benefits offered by Windows through improved virtualization, security tools, and management tools. Get more details here.