The upcoming System Center 2012 product line is arguably one of the most anticipated releases of the coming year for many IT professionals and a slow month like December is the perfect time for you and your team to download the free pre-release products and start playing around with the latest features and updates.

However, in case that’s not incentive enough, we’re handing out a limited number of coffee shop gift cards from now until the end of December (or whenever they run out) to anyone that downloads the pre-release products. My colleague Rick Claus has written a detailed post but here’s the summary:

1. Click on this link to get started. You’ll be asked to sign in with your Windows Live ID (if you don’t have one, it only takes a minute to create).
2. Verify your SHIPPING details and other pertinent data. We can’t send you a gift card if we don’t know where you are.
3. Once you click FINISH, the download manager will start the download.

Here’s what you’ll get:

• System Center 2012 Configuration Manager RC provides comprehensive configuration management for the Microsoft platform that can help you empower users with the devices and applications they need to be productive while maintaining corporate compliance and control.
  System Requirements >>
  Available in these languages: English
• System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection RC, built on System Center Configuration Manager, provides industry-leading threat detection of malware and exploits as part of a unified infrastructure for managing client security and compliance that can help you simplify and improve endpoint protection.
  System Requirements >>
  Available in these languages: English
• System Center Operations Manager 2012 RC provides deep application diagnostics and infrastructure monitoring that can help you ensure the predictable performance and availability of vital applications and offers a comprehensive view of your datacenter, private, and public clouds.
  System Requirements >>
  Available in these languages: English
• System Center Data Protection Manager 2012 Beta provides unified data protection for Windows servers and clients that can help you deliver scalable, manageable, and cost-effective protection and restore scenarios from disk, tape, and off premise.
  System Requirements >>
  Available in these languages: English
• System Center Orchestrator 2012 RC provides orchestration, integration, and automation of IT processes through the creation of runbooks that can help you to define and standardize best practices and improve operational efficiency.
  System Requirements >>
  Available in these languages: English
• System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 RC provides virtual machine management and services deployment with support for multi-hypervisor environments that can help you deliver a flexible and cost effective private cloud environment.
  System Requirements >>
  Available in these languages: English
• System Center App Controller 2012 Beta provides a common self-service experience across private and public clouds that can help you empower application owners to easily build, configure, deploy, and manage new services.
  System Requirements >>
  Available in these languages: English
• System Center Service Manager 2012 Beta provides flexible self-service experiences and standardized datacenter processes that can help you integrate people, workflows, and knowledge across enterprise infrastructure and applications.
  System Requirements >>
  Available in these languages: Chinese (Simplified), English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish