Microsoft Ships Operations Manager '07, Taps EMC for Network Monitoring

Published: March 28, 2007

by Alex Woodie

Microsoft announced the pending availability of System Center Operations Manager 2007, its flagship systems management product for helping businesses monitor the state of their PCs and servers. The software giant also unveiled a partnership with rival EMC to build more network monitoring capability into a future version of Operations Manager, and provided an update on other products in its Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI) pipeline.

Microsoft is holding the Microsoft Management Summit 2007 (MMS '07) conference this week in rainy San Diego, California, and that means the discussion turns to how Windows users can effectively monitor and control the growing number of Windows desktops and servers in their environment, as well as the applications running on this hardware. Microsoft refers to this its Dynamic Systems Initiative, and DSI--with its alphabet soup of product names and acronyms--was on full display at MMS '07.

During his keynote address yesterday, Bob Muglia, the senior vice president of Microsoft's Server and Tools division, announced that Systems Center Operations Manager 2007 will ship on April 1. (This seems like an odd-choice for a ship date, considering that April 1 falls on a Sunday this year. But Muglia isn't normally one to joke.)

Operations Manager 2007 is the first new version of the product since Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 shipped two-and-a-half years ago. Like its predecessor, Operations Manager '07 connects to a series of "management packs" built to monitor specific Microsoft products, including Windows client and server operating systems, the IIS Web server, Active Directory, SQL Server, Office '03 and '07, and message queues and logs. Microsoft says it offers 60 such packs with Operations Manager 2007.

Third-party developers, such as Oracle and SAP, have also built management packs that allow their applications to be monitored by Operations Manager. More than 100 third-party management packs were available with MOM, and Microsoft is seeking to make it even easier for third-party developers to make their own management packs with Operations Manager '07.

Operations Manager's audit collection services feature has also been enhanced with the 2007 release, which should make it easier for customers to gather security event log data from Windows systems for forensic reporting and compliance auditing purposes, the company says. The new version also includes new reports and an "easy-to-customize" reporting environment to help systems administrators troubleshoot problems in their Windows environments, Microsoft says.

Muglia also announced an extension of Microsoft's "deep" partnership with EMC that will see Microsoft licensing EMC's Smarts network discovery and health monitoring technology. However, it won't make it into Operations Manager '07, Microsoft says. But it will be included in a future version of Operations Manager, perhaps the first service pack or, more likely, the second major release, R2.

Companies adopting Operations Manager 2007 will be able to take advantage of the EMC-Microsoft partnership with a two-way connector that will enable Smarts to share network discovery, topology, and root-cause events with Operations Manager 2007, and for Operations Manager 2007 to synchronize alert status and resolution back to EMC Smarts. This product, which is called the Smarts Connector for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007, will become available in May.

The companies also announced plans to co-develop a new "cross-domain behavioral model" for Operations Manager that will help customers more quickly track down the causes of problems within their networks. The development of models is the best way to track down performance problems spanning multiple systems and platforms, according to Howard Elias, the executive vice president of EMC's global services and resource management software group.

"The only way to achieve end-to-end service visibility and control across today's complex information infrastructure is to model and manage the behaviors among components, with a cross-domain model that focuses on elements and how they interact with one another," Elias says.

Microsoft also provided an update on the state of a slew of other DSI products currently in development or recently made available. These include:

• the release to manufacturing (RTM) this spring of Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 service pack 3 (SP3), which includes the license management capabilities obtained with last year's acquisition of AssetMetrix
• the public availability of the beta 2 release of Data Protection Manager version 2 in the next 45 days
• the first public beta of System Center Service Manager offering (formerly code named "Service Desk") in the next 30 days
• the public availability of the beta 2 release of Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager within 45 days
• the beta 2 release of System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (formerly called SMS version 4) last month
• plans to support PCs running Intel's latest "vPro" business desktop chipsets, via an add-on code-named "Weybridge" that will be available following the RTM of System Center Configuration Manager 2007, which is expected in early May

RELATED STORIES

Microsoft's Future System Center Products Takes Shape

Microsoft Unveils New System Center Tools, Stirs the Alphabet Soup

Microsoft Gives MOM 2005 to Manufacturing

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