MDT 2008: It's Betty Crocker Time!

Joe Wilcox News Brief. Surely Microsoft deserves credit for wishful thinking.

Today, the company released MDT 2008 (Microsoft Deployment Toolkit). Microsoft also updated the post on the Windows Vista Team Blog:

"There are a lot of things to consider when deploying a new OS and, if your organization has 50 desktops or more, MDT is designed to help you navigate the potentially complex desktop environment. Our goal is to save you lots of time and effort in planning and building out a standard desktop experience all the way to rolling OS images out into production."

In other words, MDT 2008 is a Betty Crocker recipe book for deploying Windows Vista alone or with supporting products, like Windows Server 2008. Aside: I'm trying, but I can't stop laughing at MDT. I lived in Maryland before emigrating to California. There, MDT stood for Maryland Department of Transportation.

Anyways, MDT 2008 is better suited for Vista and Windows Server 2008 deployments and BBD 2007 would be better for Vista and Office 2007.

The updated deployment guides are timely, given that on March 18 Microsoft unleashed Windows Vista Service Pack 1 on the masses. Surely, Microsoft expects fence-sitting (that has got to hurt) enterprises will get off the fence and finally start deploying Windows Vista now that SP1 is widely available.

According to an eWEEK enterprise survey released last week, 31 percent of businesses delaying Vista deployments were waiting for SP1. In the survey, "integration with Windows Server 2008," was the No. 3 benefit (13 percent) respondents cited for deploying Windows Vista.

That said, there's no Windows Vista gold rush, even following SP1's release. More than 60 percent of businesses will wait at least six months before starting Vista deployments, according to the survey.

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