Microsoft announces future online desktop management service
Some weeks back (in late April), at the Microsoft Management Summit in Las Vegas, Microsoft unveiled System Center Online Desktop Manager, the first online service built on our System Center line of management tools. Even though this isn’t “news” at this point, I wanted to post this since it’s an important new capability coming to support our Software+Services solution stack with some cloud-based management.
The initial version of Online Desktop Manager (ODM) will provide desktop management capabilities that are focused on software updates, spyware and malware protection, system monitoring, group policy, configuration management, and asset management. ODM was demonstrated in the Day 2 MMS keynote, and below are links to some of the first screenshots of the ODM interface (from the blog of John Fontana, writing for Network World).
System Center ODM shows Host Protection info
ODM shows malware cleanup info
ODM shows update status
ODM shows update information
The new ODM service leverages our Windows Update technology, which has been protecting literally hundreds of million of PCs around the world for years, and is now a very mature technology. And the ODM console itself is based on Microsoft's Silverlight browser plug-in, as you might expect, which runs on Internet Explorer, as well as Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari and other browsers.
It was revealed that we are planning to launch a private beta of ODM in the near term, and that there will then be a public beta sometime before the end of this calendar year. Of course the “live date” will be some months after that, so don’t expect to see this service available until sometime in 2010. Of course, this just another step, or milestone if you will, in our strategy to provide Software + Services solutions to our customers and partners which involves being able to offer not only online, but on premise solutions across a range of technology. Most of you are already familiar with Microsoft Online Services, including BPOS, which provide infrastructure software via online services for those who want to leverage the capability. But, as you know, it’s all about choice with our strategy, so if you’d rather rely on an on-premise infrastructure, at least with Microsoft solutions, you have that option too.
Back to ODM, once the service goes live, Microsoft plans to do updates at least every six months. And, according to Brad Anderson, general manager of the management and services division at Microsoft, ODM will eventually include software distribution functionality (ala System Center Configuration Manager), as well as federation with Active Directory identity features, and delegation of authority capabilities.
It is expected that the service will be most popular in the small and medium business space which is typically made up of businesses without major investments in System Center tools which would be run on premise. I’m thinking this also be very good news for many of our SMB partners as well, since they can now leverage these cloud services to provide robust management for their customers’ desktops.