Ahead of its upcoming annual conference focused on management, Microsoft Thursday released the first feature-complete beta of its new System Management Server.

Now called System Center Configuration Manager, the Beta 2 of the product includes such features as policy-based software-update management, compliance auditing, support for Microsoft’s modeling language and the first release of new Internet-based client management.

Configuration Manager is one of the key pieces of Microsoft’s System Center family of tools under its Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI), a long-range plan to create a management platform for Windows.

Another key piece is System Center Operations Manager, which could ship in late March or April. Configuration Manager is expected to ship this summer. Both are expected to be showcased at the annual Microsoft Management Summit, March 26-30 in San Diego.

The new versions of Configuration Manager and Operations Manager (formerly called MOM) will for the first time support Microsoft’s Systems Definition Model (SDM), a modeling technology defined by XML-based documents embedded in applications or network resources that can communicate management and operational needs to the network. SDM is a critical unifying technology under the DSI plan.

Microsoft is also working with such companies as IBM and HP to standardize a version of SDM called the Service Modeling Language (SML), but that won’t be supported until later versions of Configuration Manager and Operations Manager are released.

“I think that they are coming along with the [DSI] vision and getting more products aligned with it,” says Peter Pawlak, an analyst with independent research firm Directions on Microsoft. “It has always been a long-term initiative. The work with SML is also a major step.”

The step is "major" in the sense that it could bring a cross-platform, standardized modeling language to software from vendors such as BEA Systems, BMC Software, Cisco, Dell, EMC, Intel and Sun, which are part of the standardization effort.

The Beta 2 of Configuration Manager for the first time includes technology that lets companies manage desktops that are outside the boundaries of their corporate network. The Internet-based client management software works without a VPN by deploying an agent on clients that will contact securely a Configuration Manager server on the corporate network to get new applications or patches and communicate inventory data from the client.