System Center Bundle On Tap

According to documents viewed by CRN, the Redmond, Wash., software giant plans to make available its first multimanagement product suite license and low-cost MOM 2005 license on April 1, just weeks before its annual management summit.

The System Center Standard Management License, priced at $245 for each managed device, offers a set of management licenses at a discount. Customers must buy the management and server licenses separately for MOM 2005, SMS 2003 and data protection.

The offering may help drive sales of Microsoft’s management products before the System Center 2006 lineup hits the streets, but the company faces an uphill battle, said Peter Greco, vice president of sales for Productive, Minneapolis. “Customers like less overhead with managing licenses so this will give Microsoft a plus.”

The first SML, to be available April 1, includes SMS 2003 Configuration Management License, System Center Data Protection Management 2006 License and MOM 2005 Standard Operations License.

The MOM Standard Operations Management License (OML)—a new option that comes as part of the System Center license bundle or as a stand-alone $100 option—covers management of basic Windows workloads, sources said. Microsoft also renamed the existing license the MOM 2005 Enterprise OML.

Microsoft will push System Center as a set of servers and services accessed from a single Systems Center Console including Systems Management Server, as well as other management services.

Microsoft also will make available this year System Center Capacity Planner 2006 Express Edition, System Center Reporting Manager 2006 and System Center Essentials for SMBs.

Microsoft also plans to ship later this year System Management Server 4.0 and Microsoft Operations Manager Version 3.0, as well as Windows Server Update Services 3.0, sources said. SMS 2003 R2 is in beta testing.