Last week, Microsoft released an update to the Assessment and Planning toolkit that provides specific reports for energy efficiency savings. Organizations can use the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit to quickly obtain comprehensive planning knowledge for migration to energy efficient computing technologies. MAP’s automated inventory and readiness assessment reports generate specific upgrade recommendations for migration to power-saving Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 operating systems. MAP also identifies suitable candidates for virtualization and makes recommendations on how physical servers might be placed in a Microsoft Hyper-V virtualized environment. Here are some of the new reports and proposals available in the MAP toolkit:

• Power Savings Calculator and Proposal. Uncovers potential electricity and carbon dioxide savings for your desktops and servers, including the benefits of virtualization via Hyper-V.
• Server Migration Reports and Proposals. Windows Server 2008 and “virtualized guests by hosts” reporting.
• Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 Migration Proposals and Reports.  Prepare recommendations for application virtualization using App-V.

Please visit http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/solutionaccelerators/dd537569.aspx for more information on the MAP toolkit.