RCPmag

Open Menu Open Menu


News

Microsoft Releases Windows 10 Upgrade Tool as Preview

A new Microsoft upgrade-planning tool called "Upgrade Analytics" has been released to public preview, promising support for organizations considering a move to Windows 10.

Microsoft announced the preview of the new service last week in a new Microsoft Upgrade Analytics blog. Details on getting the preview subsequently were posted late on Friday in this second blog post.

The Upgrade Analytics service is part of the Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS), which is a collection of services for managing public datacenter operations, such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. OMS works with System Center, but also can be purchased separately, according to Microsoft's OMS pricing page.

The Upgrade Analytics tool is specifically designed to address the uncertainties of the "application and driver ecosystem" when moving to Windows 10, Klimaschewski explained. Here's the information that the Upgrade Analytics service delivers:

  • Up-to date application and driver inventory, including usage data
  • Information about known application and driver issues as well as guidance on how to mitigate them
  • A way to track whether an application or driver is ready Windows 10 in your organization
  • Per-Computer readiness information which you use to target computers for Windows 10 deployments

Upgrade Analytics uses "telemetry" to estimate application readiness. It categorizes the use of applications in an organization into "low install count," "not reviewed," "business critical," "important," and "review in progress" categories, according to this screenshot:

[Click on image for larger view.] Upgrade Analytics screenshot. (Source: Microsoft blog post.)

The Upgrade Analytics tool also lists how many computers are "OK to pilot" for Windows 10 upgrades. It shows a count of the computers that will get upgraded drivers at the time of the Windows 10 upgrade and those PCs that will need new drivers installed.

Microsoft has published some Upgrade Analytics documentation, which can be found at this this TechNet library page.

About the Author

Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.

Featured

  • Microsoft Touts $39.8B in Returns During Annual Shareholders Meeting

    Microsoft has released the results of its Annual Shareholder Meeting, bringing in a new board member, financial stats and vision, plus down votes on most social proposals.

  • Cloud Honeypots Planted by Researchers Compromised in Minutes

    Palo Alto Networks researchers who deployed hundreds of honeypots packed with cloud service apps were shocked at how quickly they were compromised.

  • Microsoft Teams Users Receiving Loop Components

    Microsoft Loop components are starting to become available to Microsoft 365 "commercial customers" using Microsoft Teams, the company announced on Tuesday.

  • Microsoft Outlines upcoming 'Teams Phone with Calling Plan'

    Organizations wanting to use Microsoft Teams for phone calls will have some new option, starting in January.

Most   Popular