Management Roadmap Leads to System Center

Two systems management products, Systems Management Server (SMS) and Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM), will each be updated during the next year and then will be merged into a bundle called System Center Suite, according to Microsoft’s updated management product roadmap. Over time, System Center Suite will evolve into a single, fully integrated product leveraging future Windows technologies to be introduced as part of Microsoft’s Dynamic Services Initiative. However, the company gave few details on how this integration will happen, how much technology the initiative will preserve from the current management products, and which of its disparate management groups will be driving the transition.

After Windows “Blackcomb” (the server release that will follow Windows Server 2003) and System Center ship, Application Center Server, Microsoft’s server farm management and monitoring product, will be discontinued because its functions will be incorporated into the other two products.

This roadmap, announced at the Mar. 2003 Microsoft Management Summit, represents a departure from the one announced at the previous year’s summit, in which two future products, code-named Client Manager and Server Manager, split the duties of System Center. (For a graphical overview showing how various management products will evolve, see “Enterprise Management Group Roadmap“.)