Planning Toolkit Updated

A free planning tool, Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit, has been updated to help organizations prepare to migrate Web applications from on-premises servers to Windows Azure. MAP 5.5 includes new tools to help organizations assess their Web applications, servers, and databases, and it can recommend Azure resources that would be needed to host those applications.

Planning for Azure Migration

MAP, one of Microsoft’s Solution Accelerators, helps IT professionals assess an organization’s current Microsoft infrastructure to plan the software migration or deployment process. The tool inventories an organization’s current environment, assesses the readiness of computers for migration to the latest versions of Microsoft products, and prepares recommendations for hardware and software updates that may be needed. MAP is an agentless tool that uses technologies already available in an IT environment, such as Windows Management Instrumentation, the Remote Registry Service, Active Directory Domain Services, and the computer browser service to perform inventory and assessments.