System Center 2012 Arrives

Available to volume license customers as of Apr. 1, 2012, System Center 2012 is Microsoft’s major reworking of its line of system management tools. All tools have been updated, new tools have been added, and some have been rebranded. The new features modernize the company’s management offerings and make them more targeted to managing applications (rather than just devices), with increasing emphasis on management of virtualization-based private and public clouds. However, customers have fewer licensing options—most individual products are no longer available separately but must be licensed as part of a bundle.

Product Line Expands

The System Center family is Microsoft’s product set for enterprise systems management and includes products for computer configuration, monitoring, backup, software deployment, and other administrative tasks.

System Center 2012 is a major update to the System Center line. All products have been updated, and there are three new or rebranded additions: App Controller, Endpoint Protection, and Orchestrator. Microsoft has also changed the way it refers to these formerly individual products: for example, the computer configuration offering is called System Center 2012 Configuration Manager rather than System Center Configuration Manager 2012.