Microsoft User Research is inviting IT professionals in the contiguous US to participate in a user research study.  We are looking to learn from those who perform IT services for their company; such as routine server maintenance tasks, various levels of troubleshooting, daily server, network or desktop management, and the planning and implementation of technology.  We want to meet at your office to learn from you, the experts, so that we can determine what needs to be improved in our software.  This gives you the chance to tell us what your needs are and meet with some members of our product team.  We highly value your feedback and will be offering Microsoft software in appreciation of your time and participation.  If this is something that you or others at your company would be interested in, please reply to ms_sitev@microsoft.com at your earliest convenience.  We are scheduling site visits to start in mid-April.

The entire System Center Essentials team is proud to announce that System Center Essentials 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1) is released and available!  SP1 incorporates the following the improvements and major changes in functionality:

• Support for managing workgroup-joined computers
• Support for monitoring SNMPv1 network devices
• Support for using multiple auto-approval rules in update management
• Support for using a remote SQL Server 2005 instance on a computer with a different architecture (x86 or x64) than that of the computer running the Essentials 2007 management server
• Support for running the Essentials 2007 management server, console and agent on computers running Windows Server 2008 within 90 days of the release of Essentials 2007 SP1. Management packs for Windows Server 2008 and its role will be available shortly after the release of Windows Server 2008.
• Improved backup and disaster recovery guidance
• Improvements in management pack quality
• Improvements in performance, usability, and supportability

You can obtain the SP1 upgrade package here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=20824F84-B98A-4E42-93A7-045A7A58E289&displaylang=en

If you've not yet had an opportunity to check out Essentials, download and evaluate the slipstreamed SP1 edition of the Essentials 2007 evaluation here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=246df207-f051-47c3-bd64-c9072281c3c8&DisplayLang=en