Microsoft Links System Center to New Operations Management Suite
When Microsoft launched its new cloud-based Operations Management Suite (OMS) two months ago, the company emphasized that IT organizations could use it directly or as an extension to their existing System Center management implementations. Microsoft last week added that extension with the release of its System Center add-on for OMS.
The idea behind OMS, released during Microsoft's Ignite conference in early May, is that organizations that don't use System Center can use the cloud-based management platform to administer workloads running on Microsoft Azure, Windows Server, Amazon Web Services, Linux, VMware and OpenStack.
"The OMS add-on provides System Center customers access to the full suite of OMS solutions at one low cost," the company said in a blog post. "For every System Center Standard or Datacenter license you own with Software Assurance, you will be able to purchase a corresponding Microsoft Operations Management Suite add-on for access to allocated solutions that enable you to extend your datacenter, quickly enable hybrid cloud scenarios, and take advantage of cloud bursting, migration and dev/test scenarios."
According to Microsoft, OMS for System Center Standard Edition is priced at $60 per month for a two VM pack, though with an annual commitment the cost is $36 a month for those signing up by year's end. If purchasing OMS separately without System Center, the service costs $83 per month, Microsoft said. The company posted a price list, noting that for each System Center license owned, customers can purchase a corresponding OMS add-on.
Microsoft also said it's now looking to extend its use of Azure for backup and recovery to a broader base of customers including small and medium businesses (SMBs) by offering its Azure Site Recovery service with OMS. The company is extending its Azure Backup offering with a new System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) agent, available for download. Also new is Azure Backup for IaaS VMs, which Microsoft says provides access to multi-disk storage and PowerShell automation and a new Azure Backup management console.
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 07/07/2015 at 10:34 AM