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MMS 2007: Keynote, Day 2
On the second day of the Microsoft Management Summit 2007, Kirill Tatarinov presented another keynote. The session started off with some big names showing that they are using System Center products to manage their IT infrastructure; Nissan, Dell, HSBC, Carnival and Virgin. Kirill talked about what Dynamic Systems are and how System Center and the Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI) will facilitate those systems becoming or staying dynamic. He talked about three key scenario's; Dynamic Service Management, Dynamic Configuration Management and Dynamic Operations Management.Dynamic Configuration Management is about knowing about and maintaining the assets in your environment. It is also about adaptive software distribution, where you make choices about how applications will be provisioned to the user; e.g. traditionally using software distribution (SMS, Configuration Manager), application virtualization (Softgrid) or presentation virtualization (Terminal Services). To support asset intelligence, Microsoft announced that SMS 2003 SP3 will be available in April, which will have the former AssetMetrix intelligence built-in.
Kirill also talked about Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2007 and the fact that it will have the first System Center Online service, where the asset catalog can be updated in a "live" way connecting to the Microsoft datacenter. He showed that SCCM will have Intel AMT integration and Dell, HP and IBM update catalogs. This last fact will allow SCCM to provide automated updates to hardware (eg: BIOS) and software (eg: drivers) for those hardware vendors. Bill Anderson was invited to stage to demo Desired Configuration Management (DCM).
Dynamic Operations Management is about monitoring, optimizing and protecting IT services on a proactive basis. Kirill talked about Operations Manager 2007 and that there were 20.000 beta, TAP and RDP customers. Microsoft has deployed OpsMgr on 11.000 servers in 3 management groups and is managing over 120.000 desktops (110.000 agentless and 10.000 agent-managed). After that they showed a video on Virgin Megastore using Operations Manager 2007.
Kirill announced beta 2 of System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 (DPM) with support for Exchange, SQL and Sharepoint. Within 4 weeks this will be available for TAP customers and there will be a public beta in may. While not really emphasized; this means that the final naming for codename "DPM v2" will be Data Protection Manager 2007.
Just after that, Microsoft announced beta 2 of System Center Virtual Machine Manager. The final naming for currently codenamed "Carmine" will be Virtual Machine Manager 2007. As showed in the keynote yesterday, it will have physical & virtual machine conversion.
Rakesh Malhotra was invited to stage to demo Virtual Machine Manager. He showed how to dynamically create a new virtual machine, where a nice detail was that you can choose which CPU will be used for the VM, and which virtual server has the best availability to host the VM. The last screen in the wizard, showed a powershell script that can be used to perform the same thing. A great demo was the live migration of a Virtual Machine to another physical host, based on an Operations Manager 2007 task.
Kirill told that System Center Capacity Planner will seize to exist as a product, but the technology will be used throughout the System Center family of products, for instance; the rating in SC Virtual Machine Maanger, when selecting a VM host. Capacity Planner technology will also be used in "Service Manager".
Dynamic Service Management is about a platform for connecting and automating IT, optimizing asset usage and deep insight to improve decision-making ability. Kirill confirmed during the keynote that System Center Service Manager indeed will be the final naming for codename "Service Desk". The public beta should be out in the next couple of weeks. CMDB will the core for this new product, aggregating information from all other System Center products and thereby offering the highest fidelity of information. Key to the new product is "self-service", enable an end-user to get serviced.
System Center Service Manager beta 1 will be publicly available within 45 days. Ken van Hyning was invited to stage to demonstrate Service Manager. Ken showed that self-service portal allow the user to request software, search knowledge and see announcements. A really great demo was the request for software and the approval process. Ken also showed a Vista Sidebar gadget, connecting to Service Manager, show your requests and messages! Screens were showed to approve the software request and after that; Visio being streamed to the desktop using Softgrid. I think this is what they call "The WOW starts NOW". 
Kirill showed a roadmap, telling us that R2 of Operations Manager 2007 (with the EMC networking integration) will be available in the second half of 2008. Virtual Machine Manager, Configuration Manager and Data Protection Manager will be available in the second half of 2007. Service Manager will be released in the first half of 2008.