Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack

Recently I got an opportunity to participate 3 day training on MDOP held by Microsoft. In this post I will provide a brief introduction.

Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) is a suite of solutions for common IT problems faced by organizations. MDOP consist of six different technologies that simplify the application management process. After the purchase of MDOP license it is possible to consume all of those six technologies and the cost of a CAL is very low.

This is highly recommended to large/medium enterprises where this technology will be a life saver for the IT department and for the enterprise users.

Following are the 6 technologies that form the MDOP suite.

App-V (Microsoft Application Virtualization)

This is the most important product of the MDOP. It has the capability of removing compatibility issues among the applications. As an example, we can’t execute Microsoft Office Word 97 and Microsoft Office Word 2007 together. But using App-v it is possible to achieve that task very easily. The secret behind the technology is that those applications are packaged with the OS components (e.g.: system services and configurations) and they are not shared with other apps in the runtime.

Another great feature of App-V is that it is possible to manage enterprise applications centrally. So application installation, updates and uninstallation can be done centrally.

Furthermore it is possible to create target audiences for the applications so unnecessary applications are not installed.

Another big advantage is that applications are streamed downed from the App-v server (in the first time and only the changes afterwards) and run on the client machine. So a connection to the App-v server is not required to run the application unlike in Terminal services where the application is run on the server.

Med-V (Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization)

Med-V is used to remove application to operating system compatibility issues. As an example we can’t run IE 6 on Vista. But using Med-V it is still possible to run those legacy applications latest Oss. It is achieved by installing those legacy applications on a VPC and hiding the guest OS background. So users can still see IE 6 on their Vista start menu.