Last week we hosted an excellent event here with Matt McSpirit of Microsoft as a preview event for Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2, what great timing as those two products were released to manufacturer (RTM) in the last week, which means it’ll be out there for use in anger over the next month or so for VL customers and for everyone else by October 22nd.

While Matt was here he covered some great topics so we wanted to give a brief overview of what these two excellent product releases can to your business.

In part 1 of this post here are some of the features of Windows 7

Direct Access

This has potential to be a biggy for lots of businesses, the ability for you to connect through to your corporate infrastructure securely and quickly without the need for VPN, this has the potential to improve the user experience, while lowering support and admin costs, got to be a good thing!

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/enterprise/products/windows-7/features.aspx#directaccess

BranchCache

Provides another solution to an age old business problem, how do i centralise my document storage, without degrading the user experience, here’s a potential answer.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/enterprise/products/windows-7/features.aspx#branchcache

Integrated Search

one of Vista’s successes was the integration of search technology straight into the OS, Windows 7 takes that and enhances it hugely, with integration with the web and Sharepoint as well as your desktop apps and data, in terms of productivity a massive 7 plus.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/enterprise/products/windows-7/features.aspx#enterprisesearch

Bitlocker to go

building on the data encryption of Bitlocker in Vista, Bitlocker-to-go provides the ability to strongly encrypt the data that you store on external devices, such as USB keys, meaning next time I leave one in a taxi, no one will be able to access the data on it!

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/enterprise/products/windows-7/features.aspx#bitlocker

XP Mode

One of my favourites, for those old, or those funny applications that don’t run cleanly under Windows 7 or maybe didn’t run under Vista. XP mode allows you to run a virtualised XP session into which these applications can run. This is different to running in compatibility mode, this is a full virtualised session running within the OS.

XP mode also allows for the virtualised app to be presented in its own Window without the need for a full XP desktop to be presented. For a single user application virtualisation mode, this is a great solution. If you want something a bit more enterprise and centrally managed then look at App-V but as a starter, this works great.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/