1. SPECIAL PULLOUT SECTION
PARTNER’S GUIDE TO
MICROSOFT
SYSTEM
CENTER
With two new releases for midmarket companies—System Center
Essentials 2010 and Data Protection Manager 2010—Microsoft is
making more of a channel push than in the past. By Scott Bekker
RCPmag.com MAY 2010 Redmond Channel Partner 1

2. R C P F E AT U R E | S Y S T E M C E N T E R
I
n late April Microsoft released to manufactur-
ing two new products in its System Center
suite, System Center Essentials 2010 and Data
Protection Manager 2010. With the RTMs,
Microsoft is making a major effort to reach
partners ahead of the products’ general availability.
The customers Microsoft had in mind when
That’s a marketing move that has been missing from past
designing System Center Essentials fit a general
releases of the products and from most products in the profile. First, they don’t have a comprehensive and
System Center family. integrated IT management solution. The range of
systems for the product set is generally between 25
“There are still a lot of partners who are not aware and 400 PCs and between five and 50 servers. The
that Essentials is out there,” says David Mills, senior IT department consists of one to five employees,
and these are generalists, as opposed to workload
product manager, Microsoft. “There’s a lot of noise in specialists. While there’s support in System Center
[the management] space.” Mills says that because of the Essentials for some other platforms, the product
number of Microsoft partners and the potential midmar- is designed primarily for Microsoft IT shops. Ideal
customers for the suite also use the Active Directory
ket customers, the opportunity for partners to help those service and Exchange for messaging. They may also
customers manage their networks is relatively huge. use SharePoint for collaboration and SQL Server for
line-of-business applications.
“For the most part, you get around 70 percent to 80
Essentials is a branding term Microsoft tends to use percent of the enterprise product, except for those
for midmarket-focused products. They are designed to features that really didn’t make sense for midsize IT,”
meet the standard requirements of 50 to 500 PC shops said Jason Buffington, a Microsoft senior technical
with limited IT staff, and the products come with slightly product manager, during a webcast with Redmond
less functionality than related enterprise products. The Channel Partner magazine in mid-April.
Essentials moniker is common to the System Center suite
of management products and the security product line. SYSTEM CENTER ESSENTIALS 2010
It also made a brief appearance in the Windows Server The System Center Essentials (SCE) single-console
family with the short-lived Windows Essential Business design is meant to allow IT administrators to discover
Server, which was a midmarket-focused bundle of serv- devices in their networks, manage virtualization,
ers that Microsoft discontinued recently. monitor their systems, manage updates and deploy
On the System Center side, the product family software. To help with all those tasks, the product
includes four main products for enterprise customers: includes predefined reports, which cover standard-
System Center Operations Manager, System Center ized management information, and management
Configuration Manager, System Center Virtual packs, which are preloaded and help monitor and
Machine Manager and System Center Service Manager. manage common operating system components,
System Center Essentials combines functionality from services and applications.
all those products and is designed for the midmarket Discovery allows administrators to determine
(another SKU called System Center Essentials Plus what computers and groups of computers are on the
reaches the low end of the enterprise space). System network, as well as view other devices. Once systems
Center Data Protection Manager covers both enterprise are discovered, administrators can run tasks on
and midmarket needs. those computers, and also create inventories of the
Both System Center Essentials 2010 and System hardware and software on the network. An important
Center Data Protection Manager 2010 went into beta in 2010 improvement to the discovery process allows
September 2009. They hit the release candidate stage automated discovery to cover only specific and relevant
in January 2010, and entered RTM in April. General parts of the network. Users had said they were unable to
availability should follow soon. use the automated discovery feature in the past because
2 Redmond Channel Partner MAY 2010 RCPmag.com

3. “We can help them with
the installation and the
configuration and get
[customers] all ready
because we have the
it created too much noisy alert activity, such
as false reports that licensing limits were
experience of doing it in
being exceeded. Aside from adding no value, multiple environments,
the problem ran counter to the stated goals of
SCE (pronounced “ski”), which was to make
and we can tailor it to
administrators’ lives easier. their environments.”
A major investment in the 2010 version Dave Sobel, CEO, Evolve Technologies
reflects the industry movement toward virtu-
alization. SCE 2010 allows administrators to
designate virtual hosts from the consoles and
create virtual machines and workloads on
those hosts. Capabilities include configuring
virtual machines, migrating virtual machines
to new host servers, deleting virtual machines
and removing a host server.
In the webcast, Buffington listed the virtu-
alization enhancements as among the most
hotly anticipated elements of the release,
and a flash poll of partner participants in the
webcast rated the virtualization features as
the most interesting.
Buffington said choosing which third-
party virtualization technologies to support
in the Essentials 2010 release fit into the
usual feature dance among Essentials and its
enterprise-focused sibling products.
“On almost every part of Essentials, if you
compare it with the big brother from our
enterprise portfolio, there are a few features
that we’ve chosen to withhold either to
provide additional value to the enterprise
product or places where it didn’t make sense
for a midsize IT environment,” Buffington
said. “We really focused this product squarely
on midsize IT. When we looked at what IT
was doing with virtualization, we were not seeing base of the software, and which will help you manage
PHOTO BY KATHERINE LAMBERT
that legacy approach, [or a] broader penetration of the software. [In Essentials] we will just simply help you
virtualization. migrate off of [VMware],” he said.
“You see a few early adopters using something like “As far as the other platforms out there for virtual-
VMware, so we’ve made sure there was a migration ization, you saw even less of those in midsize IT than
utility available for that [in Essentials], as opposed to we did of VMware,” Buffington said. For that reason,
the full-fledged Virtual Machine Manager product, Microsoft chose not to support Citrix XenServer in SCE
which assumes that you might have a long-installed 2010, he said.
RCPmag.com MAY 2010 Redmond Channel Partner 3

4. RCPP
REDMOND CHANNEL PARTNER PROFILE
with the most recent updates from Microsoft and
third-party application providers, plus hardware
updates and security patches. Often, it can be
difficult for them to tell whether all of their
machines have the latest updates.
• Keeping Track of Assets. Another area where
midsize customers have expressed frustration is in
accurately tracking what IT assets they have.
Often, customers are manually tracking hardware
and software inventory in spreadsheets that may
Opportunity Knocks: not be up-to-date. This is critical information for
inventory reporting and planning purposes. With
Selling Management virtual servers becoming prevalent, it’s even more
critical to have an automated and integrated way
and Virtualization to to track physical and virtual assets. You can help
Midsize Businesses them find a more unified, proactive and efficient
way of keeping track of hardware and software
Zane Adam inventory.
General Manager, Virtualization, Microsoft Corp.
Microsoft has specifically created a solution
designed for midsize IT businesses to more
proactively and efficiently manage their
Q What does Microsoft consider to be a midsize business? infrastructure in a unified way.
A Microsoft defines a “midsize” business as one that typically has
50 to 500 PCs/laptops, and anywhere from 5 to 50 servers. The
Microsoft can now deliver
reason for this is that it’s where we find IT departments of 1 to 5
IT professionals who do a little bit of everything. These IT professionals the integrated IT management
have to effectively deal with the same challenges as larger IT solution our midsize business
departments, but they don’t have the luxury of specializing. They customers need to address
function more as “generalists” who have to be able to manage the
entire IT infrastructure of the company. their challenges.
Q What are some of the challenges midsize businesses face in Q How do Microsoft management and
IT management? virtualization solutions help your customers
A Each of our customers is different. However, based on Microsoft’s better manage their IT infrastructure?
numerous customer engagements with midsize businesses, we have A With the introduction of Microsoft System
identified some of the most common issues that these customers Center Essentials 2010 and Microsoft System
struggle with to effectively manage their IT environments. Typically, Center Data Protection Manager 2010, Microsoft
these IT challenges fall into four main categories: can now deliver the integrated IT management
• Keeping the IT Infrastructure Up and Running. Typically, IT solution our midsize business customers need to
generalists rely on several different “point” solutions that perform address their challenges.
tasks such as monitoring critical servers for up/down status, which • Keep IT Infrastructure Up and Running.
often forces them into a reactive mode in dealing with server Microsoft solutions provide our customers with a
management. The time and cost required to provision a new physical unified view of physical and virtual servers, PCs,
server is typically weeks, making it difficult for customers to bring laptops, hardware, software and services running
new servers online. They also need to ensure critical business data is in their company’s IT environments. With built-in
highly protected and can be quickly restored when necessary. configuration intelligence, monitoring alerts, and
• Improving End-User Productivity. Some IT generalists working in expert knowledge to quickly troubleshoot and fix
midsize businesses spend a great deal of their time and effort issues before they become big problems, System
helping company employees to quickly either remotely or locally Center Essentials enables IT administrators to
troubleshoot PC or laptop issues for employees working locally or in move from a reactive to a proactive mode when
branch offices. They also are randomly called upon to deploy the managing infrastructure.
latest business applications and updates, or investigate database • Lower Costs Through Virtualization. The
issues with custom line-of-business applications. These issues can Microsoft management solution for midsize
cause lost productivity for the company, especially when the businesses utilizes the Windows Server® Hyper-V™
employee is not local. virtualization platform to enable quick and easy
• Keeping up with Security Patches and Updates. A frequent chore consolidation of physical server workloads by
for midsize customers is keeping servers, PCs and laptops up-to-date making it easy to create and manage multiple
0510rcp_Microsoft.RCPP.final.indd 2 4/12/10 11:46 AM

5. ADVERTISEMENT
environment, using the same tools for both
physical and virtual environments.
• Deliver IT Business Continuity. Our customers
can help their customers deliver business continuity
to their organizations by helping ensure that data
and services remain highly protected and
available. For example, Data Protection Manager
enables rapid data and server/client recovery, as
well as efficient and reliable failover capabilities.
This solution can also extend backup and recovery
beyond the customer’s local environment and
into the cloud. And, through capabilities like live
migration of hosts, this solution provides the
ability to dynamically respond to change.
I encourage customers to review the following
resources and discover how they can help their
midsize and small business customers better
manage their physical and virtual environments.
Help your customers better manage their physical and virtualized
environments.
Resources
• Microsoft System Center Essentials Web site:
microsoft.com/sce
virtual servers on a single physical machine. These customers can reduce
• Microsoft System Center Data Protection
costs by consolidating resources through virtualization and unified
Manager Web site: microsoft/dpm
management, which means they only need a single set of tools to manage
• Microsoft System Center Partner Web site:
both physical and virtual resources.
https://partner.microsoft.com/global/products
• Consolidate Servers with Virtualization. Pointing our customers to
solutions/servers/systemcenter
server consolidation through virtualization is a great opportunity to help
• Microsoft Integrated Virtualization Web site:
them cut costs. System Center not only provides our customers with the
microsoft.com/virtualization
server consolidation tools they need, but also enables businesses to more
• Microsoft Midsize Business Portal:
dynamically manage their resources. For example, pooling applications
microsoft.com/midsizebusiness/products/
and servers simplifies and speeds an organization’s ability to respond to
microsoft-windows-server.aspx
new requirements and other important changes. Using Microsoft System
• Microsoft Core Infrastructure Web site:
Center Essentials 2010—which now includes Virtual Machine Manager
microsoft.com/infrastructure/solutions/
2008 R2 technology—and Windows Server Hyper-V, customers can
virtualization.mspx
quickly and easily provision new virtual servers and consolidate multiple
• Microsoft Virtualization Partner Portal:
server workloads onto a single physical machine. Also, customers can take
https://partner.microsoft.com/US/products
advantage of live migration and backup and restore protection offered by
solutions/productsvirtualization
Data Protection Manager 2010 to help improve performance and availability.
• Improve End-User Productivity. System Center Essentials enables
customers to quickly troubleshoot PC and laptop issues. Alerts identify
Current Pricing and Licensing:
• Data Protection Manager 2010
performance problems via e-mail, pager or SMS text messages, giving
microsoft.com/systemcenter/dataprotection
customers the ability and agility to quickly troubleshoot and fix PC and
manager/en/us/pricing-licensing.aspx
laptop issues before they become big problems. If someone needs an
• System Center Essentials 2010
application installed on their PC or laptop, a simple wizard quickly walks
microsoft.com/Systemcenter/essentials/en/us/
them through the process of software deployment to PCs, laptops or
pricing-licensing.aspx
servers in the user’s network. Even something like the Microsoft Office suite
of products can be quickly deployed to an entire company. With System
Center Essentials, customers can deploy Microsoft and non-Microsoft
applications, drivers, and accurately target software installations.
• Keep Systems Up-to-Date. Using Essentials allows your customers to
easily control download, configuration and deployment of Microsoft
and third-party software and hardware updates from the unified
management console. It’s also very easy to quickly check update status
and know whether the entire IT department environment is up-to-date
and highly secure. In addition, with integrated capabilities, customers can
scale their automated deployment and patching across the entire IT
0510rcp_Microsoft.RCPP.final.indd 3 4/12/10 11:46 AM

6. R C P F E AT U R E | S Y S T E M C E N T E R
“For the most part, you get around 70 SYSTEM CENTER DATA
PROTECTION MANAGER 2010
percent to 80 percent of the enterprise While System Center Data Protection Manager
product, except for those features that (DPM) 2010 includes the enterprise in its target
market, the product’s tight focus on backup and
really didn’t make sense for midsize IT.” recovery of Windows servers, clients and other
Jason Buffington, Senior Technical Product Manager, Microsoft Microsoft servers makes it a better fit for the midmar-
ket, where Microsoft IT shops are far more common.
That said, the product has evolved a much more
Once systems are discovered and virtualized, SCE robust feature set from its original 2006 release. That
provides numerous monitoring functions, which repre- version included disk-based replication of files, end-
sent the heart of the day-to-day value of the product. user restore capabilities without requiring help desk
Administrators can view alerts, create state views, set up assistance, and centralized backup of branch offices.
diagram views of the network, manage monitoring data, Microsoft rapidly upgraded the product with another
put systems into maintenance mode when necessary release in the 2007 wave of System Center products.
and change Group Policy settings. The second version added tape protection to the disk-
Another core set of ongoing management functional- based capabilities from 2006. It also added support for
ity in SCE is the ability to deploy software packages and Windows application servers and clusters, among other
update software. The record Microsoft Patch Tuesday things. Microsoft continued its support for different
event in April, along with the out-of-band update in backup media in the 2010 release, by adding cloud
March, triggered IT fire drills all over the world as backup and disaster recovery options to the previous
administrators rushed to protect systems against nearly disk and tape support. Other new features include more
three dozen newly fixed vulnerabilities. advanced Microsoft workloads that are more consistent
With SCE in place, administrators can configure the with enterprise requirements, Windows client protec-
synchronization frequency with Microsoft Update or tion and better scalability
automatically select and apply updates. The combination On the client side, DPM 2010 supports Windows XP,
also allows for manual synchronization—but through Windows Vista and Windows 7, and Microsoft supports
the single-console of SCE—and the ability to approve or the backup of up to 1,000 clients per DPM server. That
decline updates. Should a patch cause a problem, admin- scale is allowed by an approach that backs up user data
istrators can also uninstall them from the SCE console. only, rather than backing up the whole machine, such
Of no small value when the boss reads headlines about as OSes and common applications. The server also
a Microsoft Patch Tuesday is the ability to present him or integrates with local shadow copies for Windows Vista
her with a SCE status report on the rollout of Microsoft and Windows 7. A selling point is that no end-user inter-
Critical and Security Updates. vention is required by default—allowing administrators
While upgrading System Center Essentials for the to be ready for the inevitable calls from users that they
2010 release, Microsoft also worked to give the UI need that local data they never attempted to back up.
a look-and-feel that is similar to the ubiquitous and Microsoft servers and technologies that DPM can
familiar Microsoft Outlook. back up in intervals as short as every 15 minutes include
“One of the big things that was important to Microsoft Exchange Server, SQL Server, the SharePoint family,
is, if we’re going to help IT admins do something better Active Directory system state, Dynamics, Virtual Server,
than what they’re doing today, let’s not force them to do Hyper-V Server, Windows Server Hyper-V and Windows
a lot of new things,” Buffington said. Server file services. DPM is capable of maintaining up to
512 online snapshots for disk-based recovery and can
back up to tape or the cloud. For disaster recovery, the
system is designed for a direct one-click recovery from
off-site and the servers can be chained for additional
redundancy.
THE PARTNER OPPORTUNITY
Microsoft is making more of an effort than usual to
encourage partners to take the new System Center
products to the market. For example, the company
held a Partner Readiness Week for System Center
Essentials 2010 in late February. During that week,
6 Redmond Channel Partner MAY 2010 RCPmag.com

7. Microsoft offered five online training courses about “I really never talk to a small IT shop where they tell
SCE 2010 and DPM 2010. me they have so much time and everything is work-
Dave Sobel, CEO of Evolve Technologies, which is ing great. Generally those kinds of departments are
based in the Washington, D.C., area, is already talking to stressed. They’ve got a lot of demands put on them,
customers about the products and sees a lot of opportuni- they’re working with limited resources and they really
ties for his Certified Partner firm. are trying to do more with what they’ve got,” Sobel
“We can help them with the installation and the said. “When you can give them a tool that simplifies the
configuration and get [customers] all ready because management, it becomes really easy for them to look
we have the experience of doing it in multiple environ- and say, ‘Yeah, that’s a great investment for us.’
ments, and we can tailor it to their environments,” Sobel “I really don’t find a lot of organizations out there that
said during the RCP webcast. “Then we leave them with are saying, ‘It’s all just really easy and well put together.
the tools and help them when they need the partner for We have everything that we need to run this environ-
escalation on the parts they want assistance with or for ment.’ Often times they really are pushed a lot and
the new project work as an add-on.” they’re trying to do more.”
So far, Sobel said customers have been interested in
having the management pieces that SCE 2010 and DPM NOT FOR MANAGED SERVICES PROVIDERS
2010 provide, particularly the simplified management The most apparent partner opportunities involve
of the environment when they want to enable their pointing customers to SCE 2010 and DPM 2010,
people to do a little bit more. helping them configure and use the tools, and
“What you can do is you can give an organization developing project work later. One area Microsoft
that has those IT generalists on-site that are
doing that work, you can give them the tools
to effectively manage and maintain their The System Center Essentials single-console
own environment,” Sobel said. “They get
that single dashboard, and they can really
design is meant to allow IT administrators to
work with their environment. [They use] discover devices in their networks, manage
auto discover and really take control of their virtualization, monitor their systems,
environment. With the 2010 release, you get
both the physical and the virtual pieces.” manage updates and deploy software.
“As more and more midmarket organiza-
tions are virtualizing, this is a great way for them to keep previously dabbled in with SCE was using the
a handle on correct management of all of those moving platform to run the technical side of a managed
parts. What we’ve been finding is that this is a great, services provider (MSP) business. But Microsoft has
simplified platform to let our customers dig in deep and backed off that emphasis with the 2010 release.
manage their environment,” Sobel said. During the webcast, a partner asked Buffington if
Customers are in two camps, Sobel said. Some already there was a consolidated console planned for SCE so
have management technology that SCE 2010—espe- that it could be used as an MSP solution.
cially—could replace or consolidate. Others know they “That is not currently in the plan,” Buffington replied,
have problems, but they’re not sure how to solve them. although he added that Microsoft would consider it
“In general, most organizations have some kind of again if enough partners asked for the capability. “For
management technology. But often that can be a lot of channel partners that have been looking at Essentials
management process where they run around and do for awhile, we did have technology that was similar
inventory or they’ve got these four or five little tools that to that for Essentials 2007, which we called Remote
aren’t really a unified piece. Or they have some Tivoli Operations Manager. That’s not currently in the [2010]
and older management tools or they have some of the plan. Again, IT is one of those things where you have to
tools that come from the hardware vendors,” Sobel said. focus on what the customer segment needs right now.
“They’re really looking for one that’s more robust. I think We’re just not seeing as much of that.”
it’s a little bit more greenfield than it is displacement. But Microsoft briefly touted Remote Operations Manager
you do find that there are these homegrown mismatches 2007 as a platform for managing agents in client sites.
of pieces that are doing the management already.” The product supported up to 2,000 agents on a manage-
When he engages with one of those greenfield ment server and up to 530 agents through a gateway
customers, Sobel said, very few of them are happy server. The company made some presentations at
with their situations and most are open to a new way the Microsoft Management Summit in 2008 and at
of handling IT. Microsoft Tech·Ed 2008, and briefly had a homep-
RCPmag.com MAY 2010 Redmond Channel Partner 7

8. R C P F E AT U R E | S Y S T E M C E N T E R
age for the product on the Microsoft Partner Portal. there are tabs on that alert that take you right to a help
However, the official Remote Operations Manager blog page. And it allows you to keep your own company
hasn’t been updated since May 2008, and the Partner knowledge base on these issues that are happening
Portal page is gone. on your network. There are only three of us in the
For his part, Sobel discouraged other partners on IT department. We can see what’s going on among
the webinar from approaching SCE 2010 as any type of ourselves without worrying about somebody being out
MSP platform. sick or on vacation,” he said.
“The intention of System Center Essentials is to be At 250 desktops, 40 servers and three IT professionals,
an on-premises solution, managing the environment, Explorer Pipeline is near the upper end of Microsoft’s
and local to the environment itself. You’re selling it segmentation charts for customers.
on-premises to the customer,” Sobel said. “If you’re an From that perspective, one aspect of SCE 2010
IT provider and you’re reaching into the environment, that Vander Kooi appreciates is the improvements to
and logging in and using the product in that way, that automatic discovery. Now that he can set automated
certainly is one facet of it. But from a use standpoint, discovery to certain Organizational Units within the
the product is intended to be used on-premises by the Active Directory, it’s allowed him to use the feature.
people on-site with the environment.” Junk alerts made the feature more trouble than it was
worth in the SCE 2007 release.
A CUSTOMER’S VIEW
While many opportunities are in the greenfield
side, customers who already have System Center Of no small value when the boss reads
Essentials 2007 may be ripe for an upgrade, as well.
SCE has been a key part of the management infra-
headlines about a Microsoft Patch
structure at Tulsa, Okla.-based Explorer Pipeline since Tuesday is the ability to present him or
before the 2007 version came out, and the company her with a SCE status report on
is looking forward to several features in the 2010
release, according to Tim Vander Kooi. the rollout of Microsoft Critical and
The systems administrator at the fuel transportation Security Updates.
company is also a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional
(MVP) on SCE 2007, and Vander Kooi said during the
webcast that the centralization of SCE is key. But he’s also comfortable with the upgrade path if
“The great thing is that it’s all those things all in his employer grows in employees, number of servers,
one place. It just allows us to be so much more proac- complexity or all of the above.
tive. We used to know when somebody’s hard drive “Before SCE came out, it was really kind of a no-man’s
crashed because they called us and said ‘Our hard land,” Vander Kooi said of the situation of midmarket
drive crashed.’ With SCE, now we’re able to see those and smaller IT organizations. “With Essentials, it’s
things happen and be proactive before we have issues,” been a great product that’s really helped us tremen-
Vander Kooi said. dously. There’s a migration path in place to move into
“When you have people’s hard drives about to be filled Operations Manager and Configuration Manager and
up, you see it in the SCE console. If a software update Virtual Machine Manager. You can move your business
doesn’t get installed correctly, we can contact our end into the enterprise arena without disrupting your envi-
users and help them with the problem before they even ronment too much.” •
know about it,” he said.
Return on investment might be a good selling point,
too, judging by Vander Kooi’s experience. Explorer Scott Bekker (sbekker@rcpmag.com) is editor in chief of
Pipeline is a distributed company with offices through- Redmond Channel Partner magazine. Jeffrey Schwartz
out the Midwest and Southwest. “We used to have to and Lee Pender contributed to this report.
pay FedEx to ship [computers with problems]. The
greatest part is that you can see all the things in one
place and act on it very quickly.”
One little-heralded feature that Explorer Pipeline’s GET MORE ONLINE
Visit RCPmag.com to view the one-hour
IT team finds extremely useful is SCE 2010’s built-in webinar referenced in this article, hosted by RCP
knowledge base, with its option for companies to add Executive Editor Jeffrey Schwartz.
their own specialized notes. “Anytime an alert is fired,
8 Redmond Channel Partner MAY 2010 RCPmag.com