Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007 (Essentials 2007) is a new management solution in the System Center family of IT systems management products specifically designed for medium-sized businesses with up to 30 servers and 500 clients. Essentials 2007 provides a unified management solution that enables IT professionals in medium-sized organisations to manage their IT environment proactively with increased efficiency.

Key Features:

- Simple installation and setup
- Comprehensive monitoring
- Update management
- Software deployment
- Integrated reporting
- Software and hardware inventory

Key Benefits:

- Unified experience: Essentials 2007 provides a single solution with a single console for managing servers, clients, hardware, software and IT services for a unified experience.
- Proactive management: Essentials 2007 enables proactively managing the IT environment, keeping the system up-to-date with tools that accelerate problem resolution and enable automation of system updates and data.
- Increased efficiency: System Center Essentials 2007 is easy to deploy and maintain, helping simplify complex management tasks for increased efficiency.

Within the IT department of medium-sized businesses, customers may perceive what they have today is ‘good enough’ and, given the barriers to upgrading such as complex installation and configuration or cost, that there is not a compelling reason to purchase System Center Essentials 2007 right away, if at all.

To differentiate, Essentials 2007 must communicate its ability to deliver a unified management solution that enables IT professionals in medium-sized organisations to manage their IT environment proactively with increased efficiency.

For the financial bottom line, Essentials 2007 is able to deliver real efficiencies that help drive down IT operating costs for medium-sized businesses. This message should help increase the desire to upgrade among existing WSUS customers as well as drive interest among users of competitive solutions.

Product positioning:

- For IT professionals in medium-sized organisations, System Center Essentials 2007 provides a unified management experience because it enables you to secure, update, monitor and troubleshoot better from a single console. So you can efficiently and proactively manage your IT environment
- Key differentiation: Unified experience
- Benefit to medium-sized businesses: Proactive management
- Category benefit: Increased efficiency

IT professional core idea:
System Center Essentials 2007 is much better than what I’m using now because it provides a unified IT management experience; I don’t have to open and use multiple applications anymore to do my job. I can also get out of reactive mode by taking advantage of Essentials 2007 proactive management features and work more efficiently since it helps me simplify complex management tasks like troubleshooting end-user problems and deploying software to servers and clients.

Business decision maker core idea:
By using System Center Essentials 2007, my people could become more productive because my IT staff will be able to work more efficiently and increase the availability and reliability of our IT environment.

For further information, contact Licensing on 0118 9898 240 or email licensing@bluesolutions.co.uk

Is Essentials 2007 a ‘bundle’ of Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) and Microsoft System Management Server (SMS)?
No. Essentials 2007 is a new, unified IT management solution built on the following foundation technologies: System Center Operations Manager 2007; Windows Server® Update Services 3.0; SQL Server™ 2005; and Microsoft Update.

What kind of devices can be managed with Essentials 2007?
From a single console, Essentials 2007 allows your customers to manage their Windows®-based servers, Windows-based clients, applications, services and SNMP-capable network devices.

What Windows operating systems are supported for management with Essentials 2007?
Windows 2000 Professional Service Pack 4 (SP4), Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) (x86 & x64), Windows Vista® (x86 and x64), Windows 2000 Server SP4, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and R2 (x86 & x64).

If your customer has branch offices, how many Essentials 2007 servers do they need?
Essentials 2007 is a single-server solution, so it does not require a connection to other Essentials 2007 servers.

How many servers, clients and network devices can be managed with Essentials 2007?
With Essentials 2007, your customers can manage up to 30 Windows-based servers and 500 Windows-based clients. Essentials 2007 will not track or limit the number of SNMP-capable network devices that may be managed. However, performance parameters may limit to approximately 75 network devices.

Will Essentials 2007 support virtualization?
Essentials 2007 will manage virtualized Windows environments, within the 30 server and 500 client limits. However, it cannot be run on a virtualized machine.

Can your customers upgrade to Essentials 2007 from Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) 2.0 or 3.0?
Yes. The Essentials 2007 setup process allows you to upgrade from an existing installation of WSUS 2.0 or 3.0. This upgrade will preserve existing update information like update binaries and metadata plus groups and approvals.

Can your customers migrate to Essentials 2007 from an existing installation of Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 Workgroup Edition?
Yes. Essentials 2007 provides support for migrating management packs from both Operations Manager 2005 and Operations Manager 2005 Workgroup Edition. It is also possible to establish side-by-side operation with Essentials 2007 to preserve mission-critical data.

Processor: CPU can be x86 or x64-based; at least 2.0 GHz

Operating System: Microsoft Windows Server 2003 SP1 or R2, Standard Edition or Enterprise Edition; Small Business Server 2003 SP1 or R2

Memory: 1 GB of RAM (2 GB recommended)

Hard Disk: 12 GB of free disk space (20 GB to store updates locally)

Other Prerequisites: Active Directory®, SQL Server 2005 SP1, Internet Information Services 6.0 and the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 and 3.0

To learn more about System Center Essentials 2007, visit www.microsoft.com/sce