Tecsys IT-HAUS, the Microsoft System Center Orchestrator

Tecsys IT-HAUS unveiled Microsoft’s New World of System Center to […]

April 2, 2012

Tecsys IT-HAUS unveiled Microsoft’s New World of System Center to about 30 IT managers at a 28 March conference at the Hotel Parc Belair in Luxembourg. They learned how Microsoft System Center 2012 can streamline datacenters, devices, and clouds. Along with an overview and demonstration of the system management tool, conference attendees heard from a local IT department that has already been putting System Center 2012 to the test.

Sébastien Grotto, a program manager at tecsys IT-HAUS, explained that System Center is a total solution. “We are not talking about products anymore,” he said. Mr. Grotto outlined some the components and their new features for the 2012 version, including Data Protection Management, Virtual Machine Manager, Operations Manager, Configuration Manager, and Service Manager. Mr. Grotto also introduced Orchestrator, App Controller, and Endpoint Protection. He said that one of the most exciting things about System Center 2012 is the automation you get with Orchestrator, which is the workflow management component. “Without it,” Grotto explained, “you can’t do anything.” He said the automation will improve the quality and availability of a company’s IT services.

Lakdar Ladrouz, a consultant for System Center 2012 at tecsys IT-HAUS, echoed Grotto’s enthusiasm for the platform’s automation. Ladrouz demonstrated how companies can benefit from the new workflow with an example of moving information from an end user’s desktop to the datacenter. In his scenario, he showed how a human resources user could go into a Web Portal to request a new employee be added to the system. The new employee’s manager would then approve the request, and Orchestrator would launch Runbooks. IT would receive the service request, complete it, and then the human resources user and the new employees’ manager would get a notification when the account is added and the employee has a desktop. Ladrouz says the automation of these processes saves employee time and effort.

Schroders Luxembourg see the direct benefit

Schroders Luxembourg is already in the testing phase for parts of System Center 2012. John Grisewood, a Service Management Analyst for Schroder’s, spoke about why his team decided to take on this project and how it is faring. Schroders had already been working with some of the existing Microsoft applications, and Grisewood wanted to make them more manageable. Also, Schroders wanted to have better access to Web Front and be able to more easily customize Sharepoint. Grisewood says he is very pleased Service Manager now allows a web portal. He acknowledges, “It’s difficult to be the first one on board. We’ve put in the effort because we see the benefit of the product.”

Conference attendees were very positive about what they learned. For the next step, they want to see more Beta testing results, get more technical data and find out about the costs. One of the advantages of System Center 2012 is a new licensing structure that will include all components. With 6,000 developers working on it, the complete platform should be fully released any day now.

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