News

New Servers Unveiled at Microsoft Management Summit

• By Scott Bekker
• 04/19/2005

The company is using the Microsoft Management Summit this week to reposition System Center from a specific suite that would have bundled Systems Management Server 2003 and Microsoft Operations Manager 2005. Now System Center is a family name, like Windows Server System or Office System, that will encompass other products.

One element originally planned for the System Center suite was an OLAP-based reporting server that would give administrators different views of their infrastructure from data collected by SMS and MOM. Kirill Tatarinov, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Windows and enterprise management division, said on Tuesday that Microsoft will ship the product this year as System Center Reporting Manager 2005.

Tatarinov also announced a new product called System Center Capacity Manager 2006, also slated for release this year. The product will build on information generated from System Center Reporting Manager to allow administrators to create "what-if" scenarios and to plan for performance issues in designing system architectures. The technology, which carried the code-name "Indy," will include optimization guidance.

Last week, Microsoft unveiled the first product with the System Center name, System Center Data Protection Manager 2006. Previously known as Data Protection Server, the product is designed for backup and recovery of Windows file servers. DPM is currently in public beta testing.