Microsoft has expanded the beta of its Intune hosted desktop-computer management service.
Microsoft will open the service to an additional 10,000 users, as well as extend its availability to a number of additional countries beyond the U.S., including France, Germany, and Spain.
When it comes to thinking about Microsoft's cloud strategy, Windows Azure usually springs to mind. But Intune, which is more modest in scope, may provide the company with an earlier success story, if the popularity of its first beta is any indication.
Microsoft first introduced Intune in April as a beta service. Within 30 hours of its availability, all the 1,500 slots for the program were filled.
Designed for midsized organizations with limited IT help, Intune provides an Internet-accessible console from which all of an organisation's computers can be managed, even if the computers themselves reside in different offices.
Microsoft hosts the console on its own servers. From this console, an administrator can apply Windows updates and patches, monitor PCs, manage security policies, keep inventory of PCs and remotely administer an ailing PC. Microsoft will queue the updates, as well as manage all the back-end server software needed for administration duties.
The company plans to make Intune generally available in early 2011.
This second beta phase will be limited to customers and partners located in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, France, Germany, Ireland, Spain, the U.K. and Italy.