System Center Reporting Manager 2006 Nears Completion

A release candidate of System Center Reporting Manager (SCRM) 2006, Microsoft’s new tool for analyzing and reporting systems management data, is available for evaluation. By combining performance and event data extracted by Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 with inventory data extracted from Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003, SCRM is designed to help IT departments and managers make better operational and planning decisions. However, the first version of SCRM can’t be extended to include additional data elements or other sources of management data, and it will also be incompatible with the next releases of MOM and SMS.

System Center Product Integration Strategy

After Microsoft revealed a plan in 2003 to merge MOM and SMS into a single management product called System Center, customers made it clear that they didn’t see enough value in a consolidated product to offset the design and transition problems created by merging the two very different products. In response, Microsoft decided to steer away from the traditional consolidated management product model toward what it describes as a “federated” model. Microsoft now plans to maintain MOM and SMS as separate products, each with operational data stored in its own SQL Server database, and will soon offer a third product, SCRM 2006, to warehouse data extracted from both products and generate reports from that data.