Here's a great resource to get up-to-speed on the latest version of System Center 2012.
Virtual Lab
System Center Operations Manager 2012: Infrastructure and Application Performance Monitoring
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012: Building Your Cloud Infrastructure
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012: Building a Service Template
Introduction to System Center Configuration Manager 2012
Once you've gone thru the labs, you might want to build out your own lab environment. Download evaluation versions of the software to get you started on your evaluation of Private Cloud and System Center!!!