System Center Product Roadmap

A plethora of product releases from Microsoft’s Windows and Enterprise Management Division will mark 2007 and early 2008. These management products all fall under Microsoft’s new System Center brand umbrella, and several constitute the first Microsoft products to implement the use of management models, a key pillar of the company’s Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI). Microsoft believes that its DSI strategy and System Center products will help convince customers that Windows is a superior enterprise platform that provides lower total cost of ownership and greater flexibility than Linux and Unix alternatives.

Introduction

When Microsoft laid out its systems management strategy in spring 2003, it urged Windows application developers to begin designing manageability into their products, since “bolting on” management after the fact has proven ineffective. The 2003 strategy invited developers-including Microsoft’s own-to do two things. First, they should instrument their applications to expose significant events and performance metrics that could be captured by external management software. Second, they should build discovery, configuration, and health models for their applications that would aid IT operations personnel in interpreting the instrumentation data and monitoring the applications’ health. An overarching project called the Dynamic Systems Initiative would guide development of the models, tools, and products needed to accomplish these goals.