System Center 2012

Release Candidate availability announced

Today Microsoft announced availability of the release candidate for System Center 2012. While there previously has been a System Center "suite," with this version, Microsoft is getting serious about making the suite the product, and the individual products are now components. Microsoft is focusing on the entire application.

This is being driven in large part by the cloud. System Center 2012 acknowledges the shift from client/server computing (remember that?) to continual connectivity and diverse devices, requiring a new infrastructure on the back end to service those devices. System Center wants to be that infrastructure for you to manage and service your clouds, be they public, private, or hybrid (and even if you're not running on the cloud).

Remember though, the cloud is a journey (and potentially an adventure). You will be taking what you have done with virtualization and "journeying" to the future. System Center aims to give you more of a single pane of glass for managing your enterprise, and an integrated data warehouse and CMDB (although each application still manages its own data and has its own reporting on specific functions). System Center 2012 will also include a unified installer, available in the RC and front-ending the setup process for each component.

While today's announcement was high-level, more details will follow as System Center 2012 gets closer to general availability, which will be during the first half of this year. To download the RC, go to http://www.microsoft.com/private-cloud.

• System Management
• Cloud Computing
• private cloud
• System Center