A couple of weeks ago at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, we announced that the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) 2011 R2 would be released in August. Today, I am excited to tell you that MDOP 2011 R2 is now available for download from the Microsoft Volume Licensing site. Customers who do not have access to the Volume Licensing site have the option to download it from TechNet or MSDN and Windows Intune customers have access to MDOP as an addition to their subscription.

The Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) is a suite of technologies that helps improve compatibility and management, reduce support costs, increase asset management and improve policy control. MDOP technologies give customers’ better control of the desktop, accelerate and simplify application deployments and management, and enable IT to provide highly responsive service. This can significantly reduce the total cost of ownership of the operating system and entire application management lifecycle.

With MDOP 2011 R2, we have added Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM), Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolkit (DaRT) 7.0, and Microsoft Asset Inventory Service (AIS) 2.0. This release builds upon the foundation of MDOP 2011, which was released in March and included Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) 4.6 SP1, Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) 2.0, Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM) 4.0, AIS 1.5, DaRT 6.5, and Microsoft Desktop Error Monitoring (DEM) 3.5.