Systems Management, Security, and Identity Management

The current wave of releases for the entire System Center line became available in Dec. 2012, with the release of System Center 2012 SP1, and one new product was added. Most System Center 2012 products are not available separately but only as components of two System Center licensing bundles: System Center 2012 Standard and System Center 2012 Datacenter, each containing licenses for eight System Center 2012 products. (See the sidebar “System Center Product Names“.) The service pack allows the products to be used with Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, among other improvements. Previews of the next versions in System Center 2012 R2 arrived in June 2013; final release is expected in the third quarter of 2013.

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. 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 is expected in early 2014.