Orinoko talk Optimised Desktop and how to ensure licensing compliance

By Matt McSpirit - virtualboy. Microsoft Partner Technology Specialist for Virtualization;
http://blogs.technet.com/mattmcspirit

I’ve had the pleasure to know the Orinoko chaps for some time now.  Heck, we’ve even chatted virtualisation over Peri-Peri chicken!  One thing I’ve learnt about these guys very quickly, is how well they know the desktop.  Whether it’s upgrading or deploying it, with technologies like System Center Configuration Manager, streaming applications to it, with technologies like App-V, or more recently, virtualising it, with technologies like Hyper-V, Remote Desktop Services, and Citrix XenDesktop.  Whichever scenario comes about from a desktop perspective, chances are, these guys have seen it.

Recently, as some of you may know, we held a ‘Best of MMS 2010’ event, in (downtown ;-)) London, focusing on the System Center suite of technologies, and surrounding ecosystem.  At the event, Jeff Wettlaufer, Senior Technical Product Manager in the System Center team, blogger, and all round good-egg, sat down with John and Carl from Orinoko to chat ‘desktops’ - what exactly the optimised desktop meant to the guys, and how, among other things, they were seeing Windows 7 adoption. You can check out the video, below:

So, onto the second half of the post title - If any of you out there are using SCCM, or are thinking about using it, one of the nifty things I found out it could do (via John’s blog) was take an export of your Microsoft license statement, from the Microsoft Volume Licensing Site, and compare this with the results of the Asset Intelligence check and start to see where you’re perhaps over-licensed, or, worse, under-licensed!  I’ve pinched a screengrab from John’s blog to illustrate what I’m on about:

I’d check out John’s blog if you get stuck, as it is possible to go wrong, particularly when you’re cleaning up the Excel spreadsheet ready for conversion to XML.