I am doing a survey to get your feedback about the quality of 2 very popular Windows 7 training programs:

TrainSignal’s Windows 7 Administration Training – http://bit.ly/windows7adminsurvey

and

TrainSignal’s Windows 7 Deployment Training – http://bit.ly/Windows7deploymentsurvey

Please click here to take the survey

Microsoft has sold 300 million copies of Windows 7 to date, officials said on January 27, the day the company is reporting its Q2 FY11 earnings.

That’s up from the 240 million figure we last heard in October 2010. Microsoft execs also said that Windows 7 is now on 20 percent of all Internet-connected PCs. According to a copy of Microsoft’s earnings report, which went out ahead of the close of the financial markets, Microsoft earned $19.95 billion for the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2010.

Operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $8.17 billion, $6.63 billion and $0.77 per share, respectively. The quarter really “Kinected” for Microsoft, as my blogging colleague Larry Dignan noted.

Source

The Windows 7 migration project team is responsible for either performing comprehensive audits or otherwise organizing the implementation of these audits.

The audits that need to be performed are:

License Audits: What relevant software licenses do we have now? When will they expire? What additional software do we need?

Hardware Audits: What PC’s, Servers and Mobile devices do we have now? Are they powerful enough? Do they meet and exceed the minimum requirements for running Windows 7? Are we scheduled for a desktop or server refresh?

Network Audits: What’s the state of our network? What’s the speed of our network? Can we deploy Windows 7 automatically over the network or do we need a tech support person to physically touch each workstation?

Application Audits: What software applications do our users use? What are the most important ones? Are they compatible with Windows 7? What if they aren’t?

Microsoft has made available a host of tools to assist organizations with the planning and deployment phases of the migration process.

These tools support Lite‐Touch and Zero‐Touch deployment processes and help you support the Planning, Building, and Deploying phases of your migration project.

Planning Phase Tools

These include:

• Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit
• Microsoft’s Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT)
• Enterprise Learning Framework (ELF)
• Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT)
• Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2007
• Microsoft Asset Inventory Service (AIS)

Building Phase Tools

These include:

• Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2010 Deployment Workbench
• Windows AIK: The Windows Automated Installation kit (AIK 2.0) is available as a free download from Microsoft and contains the tools listed below:
• Windows System Image Manager
• Windows Setup
• Sysprep
• Windows Preinstallation Environment
• Deployment Image Servicing and Management
• ImageX
• Windows Imaging
• DiskPart User State Migration Tool (USMT)

Deployment Process Tools

These include:

• Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT 2010)
• Deployment Workbench
• Windows Deployment Services
• System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (SCCM)
• User State Migration Tool (USMT).

In light of my last story, this is interesting…

Microsoft’s Windows division has been on something of a roll recently, but a deeper look into the company’s financials seems to indicate that the reported numbers might look better than reality.

Information Week has done some deep digging into Microsoft’s recent SEC filings and found that several bookkeeping changes resulted in significantly increased reportings of revenues in the company’s Windows division.

Revenues that had been assigned in previous quarters to other divisions within the company — mostly the Entertainment and Devices unit which includes highly successful businesses such as Xbox — were, in this past quarter, re-assigned to the Windows operating system division.

So just how much money was moved? Well, according to Information Week and the relevant SEC filings statements, about $259 million, or a boost of 6.5% in revenue to the division overall for a total of $4.24 billion rather than the $3.98 billion originally stated for Q1 2010. This also resulted in a 25% reduction in revenue for EDD, while the total — $12.92 billion — stayed exactly the same.

Of course, all these bookkeeping maneuvers mean that Redmond’s Windows division looked like it was making a decent amount more cash than it actually was, and when taking into account another complex move — that of deferring $1.5 billion in upgrade revenues from Windows Vista machines sold in Q4 2009 to Windows 7 in Q1 2010 — the resulting picture is a bit different than it would appear on the surface.

Ultimately, it looks like Microsoft raked in an 11% increase in Windows revenue rather than the 66% reported, when removing both the bookkeeping changes from other units and the upgrade deferrals. Of course, this is all apparently technically on the up-and-up, in terms of financial reporting is concerned, but it does give some insight into the stunning profits recorded in the Windows division as of late.

Source