Microsoft Windows Intune is a new product aimed at managing pcs in a new way. My original post can be found here:

Read Windows Intune

The initial beta was restricted to the US, Canada, Mexico & Puerto Rico and 1000 participants. Microsoft have now opened that up to another 10,000 users in the following countries:

To be eligible you need to deploy it to at least 5 machines and start within 1 week.

If you’re interested, go and sign up here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsintune/windowsintune-experience.aspx

Pricing

The pricing of Windows InTune has now been confirmed for the States and it is:

$11 per user per month

That gets you:

• Cloud based Desktop Management service
• Anti Virus and Anti-Spyware
• Windows 7 Enterprise Desktop Upgrades

and, for an extra $1 per user per month, you can get the whole MDOP suite too. More MDOP info here:

Read Microsoft MDOP

Partner Features

Many partners will be looking to InTune to provide them with a new way of generating revenue, through the ability to remotely manage their customers machines. This will reduce the need to travel thus saving money on hotels and petrol and increasing profit margins. Microsoft have quickly, and cleverly, added in a new feature aimed at making this as easy as possible…the “Multi – Account Console”:

This will allow partners to quickly and easily see a top level view of all the customers they manage and, through filtering, spot those needing urgent assistance immediately.

Feedback:

There is already a lot of positive feedback on Windows InTune from the first beta, such as:

“I save about 40% of the time I used to spend managing PC updates, thanks to Windows Intune. It frees me up to focus on developing more custom applications—and bring on more customers”

“I think we could expand our customer base by at least 10-15 percent immediately”

“It accelerates their (customers) decision to make the move (to Windows 7)”

The Future:

Early 2011 will see the general availability of Windows Intune in the countries listed in the 1st screenshot above. It will then move to more European & Latin countries as well as “select” Asian locations.

I’ve signed up to the beta and will hopefully have some post following up on that experience soon.

The MS Blog post can be found here.