Systems Management, Security, and Identity Management

The entire System Center line was updated in Oct. 2013 with the release of System Center 2012 R2 and will be further updated with a major release in the first half of 2016. Most System Center products are not available separately but only as components of licensing bundles. (See the sidebar “System Center Products“.) The R2 version allows the products to be used with Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2, among other improvements. A technical preview of System Center 2016 became available in Oct. 2014, was updated in May 2015, and is expected in final form at the same time as the next version of Windows Server in the first half of 2016.

For client management, the Desktop Optimization Pack 2014, released in Apr. 2014, has major improvements to the BitLocker Administration and Monitoring tool and minor updates to other components. The Desktop Optimization Pack 2014 R2, released in Dec. 2014, brought improvements to Application Virtualization and User Experience Virtualization. Updates to Microsoft Intune (previously called Windows Intune), Microsoft’s online PC management service, were released in Oct. 2013 with support for Windows 8.1, and several further updates have improved management features for mobile devices and applications. The service name was changed in Oct. 2014.