Howdy - I'm Larry Grothaus, a product manager on the System Center team. To start out let me point out that there are two "Larry's" on the System Center business, with Larry Orecklin being the other. Larry "O" is the general manager over System Center...

Welcome to the new year of System Center blog posts. Scanning the many predictions for 2008 from various analysts, press and bloggers I can’t help but notice the sheer number of references to a staffing crisis in IT. (I saw this issue play out in detail...

Hi, I’m Larry Orecklin, general manager of System Center product management and virtualization marketing. I’m in San Francisco this morning at a virtualization conference hosted by Bernstein Research, who provides investment research to institutional investors. It’s been interesting for me to see the investment community awaken this summer to the impact of virtualization software. The investment community is quickly realizing that the customer benefits of virtualization are very real and that customers will turn to established vendors with proven solutions. To that point, I’m happy to tell the audience this morning that we’ve released a public beta of Hyper-V within Windows Server 2008. You can read about it at the Windows Server Division blog. And be sure you register for a webcast with Mike Neil on Dec. 18 at 12:30pm PST [3:30pm EST] where he’ll discuss technical information and answer your questions about Hyper-V beta. But my job isn’t only about talking to investors, but rather working with partners and customers to optimize their investments in infrastructure software. My role of systems management and virtualization reflects the symbiotic nature between the two. It reflects the importance of systems management to customers’ adoption and deployment of virtualization to consolidate servers, implement business continuity/disaster recovery, and to make IT systems more responsive to business needs. As customers move to embrace new hypervisor-based software, like Hyper-V, the need has grown exponentially for management tools that fully unlock the transformative nature of this technology. Whereas management tools might have been seen as an important asset, today management tools have become an absolute necessity as more layers of the computing stack become virtualized at large companies and mid-sized companies. ...

"Community" is one of those great, big, giant words that can mean many different things. Its exact meaning in a context can shift depending on who you talk to, what they're into, and how they see the world. It's a word that holds so much promise because...

“In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow There is a lot to be said for simplicity, especially when it comes to IT management. Fewer, more centralized systems mean less complexity...

Don't miss out on upcoming opportunites to participate in live TechNet webcasts as our experts delve into critical topics on how to maximize deployment of System Center. Live participation features interactive technical presentations and the ability to...

I was in Barcelona at ITForum a few weeks ago and it was a huge event for System Center. We’ve now officially launched SC VMM, SC DPM and SCCM. Along with those launches there have been a bunch of announcements from our partners. We’ve also corralled...

This week’s IT Forum in Barcelona clearly produced a great deal of interest in the new System Center products. One other aspect of that show that strikes me is the number of conversations that referenced that the System Center tools and IT management...

Hello. My name is Paul Ross and I’m a Senior Product Marketing Manager in the System Center team. I recently joined Microsoft from Business Objects and one of the key things I’ve been working on in the past few months is the launch of the new System Center...

Greetings! My name is Beckett Thomsen and I am the product manager for System Center Capacity Planner (SCCP), among other responsibilities. I'm excited to let you know that the Release Candidate for SCCP 2007 is now available for download. SCCP 2007 helps...

There's a lot going on with System Center these days, specifically this week, as numerous announcements are being made at IT Forum in Barcelona, along with the publication of tons of supporting content in various places around and about the Web, including...

Greetings! My name is Robb Mapp and I’m the industry analyst relations manager for Microsoft’s System Center family. In my role, I work with industry pundits who focus on systems management product and instrumentation technology. These are all of the...

Hi there, my name is Eric Berg and I am the director of product management for System Center. My team is responsible for the future product planning and current product marketing of the System Center products. I get a lot of our customers asking me about...

As you’ve probably read throughout all of our product literature and all of our blogs—some of which you’ll see linked on the left in the blogroll—we feel we have an extremely strong, extremely functional product family. This product family continues to...

System Center-related Events, Videos, Interviews & More from the Expo Hall in Barcelona Find here collected System Center-related info, news, and more from IT Forum in Barcelona, Spain (November 12-16, 2007). See also the Virtual Tech-Ed site and...

Or, The Importance of Being Earnest Hey, there. I'm Dave, one of the folks behind the scenes who's working on getting our team blog and other broad reach marketing vehicles tuned into the real concerns and priorities of the System Center community...

Hi and welcome to the first post on the official System Center blog and please allow me to introduce myself, my name is Brad Anderson and I’m the General Manager for the Management and Solutions Division at Microsoft. In this position I oversee the teams...