Today, Microsoft announced the release of System Center Service Manager Beta 2, with over 300 customers participating in the product’s Rapid Deployment Program. In their early evaluations, these customers have seen how through the power of Service Manager’s integrated platform they can easily adapt and automate IT Service Management best practices. 

Other Service Manager benefits:

·         Service Manager will provide built-in processes based on industry best practices for incident and problem resolution, and change control. Through its configuration management database and process integration, Service Manager will automatically connect knowledge, workflow and information from System Center Operations Manager, System Center Configuration Manager and Active Directory.

·         Service Manager will reduce support costs and improve responsiveness to end users through the self-service portal for provisioning and self-help, and through easy-to-use templates and rule-driven notifications to effectively and quickly guide IT professionals. 

·         Service Manager will optimize resources to align to an organization’s business goals and adapt to the ever-changing business requirements. Using SQL reporting services, Service Manager will support informed and cost-effective decision making. Through Service Manager’s integration with Desired Configuration Management (DCM) a core feature of System Center Configuration Manager 2007, customers will be able to support end-to-end configuration compliance.    

For more information on this beta release, please visit the System Center Service Manager website: http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/service-manager.aspx