Systems Management, Security, and Identity Management

The entire System Center line was updated in Oct. 2013 with the release of System Center 2012 R2. Most System Center products are not available separately but only as components of two System Center licensing bundles: System Center 2012 R2 Standard and System Center 2012 R2 Datacenter, each containing licenses for eight System Center 2012 R2 products. (See the sidebar “System Center Product Names“.) The R2 version allows the products to be used with Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2, among other improvements.

For client management, the Desktop Optimization Pack 2013, released in Apr. 2013, has major improvements to the BitLocker Administration and Monitoring tool and minor updates to other components. Betas of two components, App-V 5.0 SP2 and UE-V 2.0, were released in June 2013 and are expected to be released in final forms shortly after Windows 8.1. Updates to Windows Intune, Microsoft’s online PC management product, were released in June 2012 and Dec. 2012, and a further update to support Windows 8.1 arrived in Oct. 2013.