Why integrate with System Center?

Today everyone is talking about cloud computing. Does not matter who you are – independent software vendor, software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider or a hardware manufacturer – chances are “The Cloud” is on your TODO list.Microsoft leads their journey into the cloud by investing in numerous cloud technologies. Rather than providing just a software platform, Microsoft is building the cloud story on the multiple levels, including Software Development, IT Operations, End-user experience, etc.

As infrastructure complexity grows, IT people are demanding a consolidated comprehensive experience, where all management, monitoring, change control and other service functions are done in a consistent and controllable manner. And System Center is hitting the nail on the head. The System Center becomes an essential part of the Server and Cloud Platform that Microsoft is pushing to the market. In the nearest future we will experience a paradigm shift in how we run and manage our applications.

Therefore, the question is: are you ready? Does your product (software solution, appliance or cloud-delivered service) provide that kind of integrated experience for IT? Many companies have their own diagnostic and management tools, monitoring kits, administrator applications even configuration management and self-service portals… But as long as these tools do not work in System Center or with System Center, there will be certain functional gap, resulting in additional overhead for System Center-powered IT and, therefore, lower quality of service and lower ROI for your products.

Launching your own System Center Integration Package

So, what is your System Center story? And, most importantly, what will you have to design and build to achieve the System Center Presence for Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform? For most of the vendors this will mean investing in a new SKU – the System Center Integration Package. In general case it will include:

• A Management Pack for the System Center Operations Manager – for IT operations to monitor your product instance’s health, get alerted about failures and dangerous conditions and know how to read the diagnostic data.
• A PowerShell cmdlet - for IT administrators and production support to interact with your product through automation scripts.
• An Integration Pack for the System Center Operations Manager – for IT operations to automate and support routine maintenance operations with your product.
• A Configuration Pack for the Configuration Manager – to allow your product’s configuration to be discovered, read and validated against best practices.
• A Management Pack for the Service Manager – to automate your product-specific ITIL or MSF practices.
• Optionally, a monitoring cartridge for the System Center AVIcode – to provide failure diagnostic capabilities for your server .NET applications.

This will likely mean dedicated resources for software development, funded roadmap, product reviews and certifications, trainings and support, building consulting practice, painful first deployments, etc… For many this will be a path of trial and error.

The value of VIAcode System Center Presence Program

VIAcode has traveled this path many times and we know how to do it right the first time. Besides design and implementation of the System Center Integration Package we also deliver:

• Comprehensive software documentation for your engineers and your product end-users
• Training program for your product end-users and your employees (includes script, multimedia and lab content where applicable)
• Assistance with establishing consulting practice and delivering first implementations
• 3^rd level support, sustain engineering and maintenance (Time and Material and Fixed Cost plans are available)
• Assistance in creating sales literature and marketing material for your System Center Integration SKU.

Bottom line:we take care of your System Center Presence initiative for you. We do it professionally, on time and budget. You get everything you need to start selling an additional capability or start shipping a great new feature for your product. After the project is done, it can be transitioned to your company for further development and maintenance.

Outsourcing your System Center Presence initiative to us is the right decision from both economical, engineering and product management perspective. After all, this is our core competency, not yours. Please contact us today

and schedule an introduction call to learn more about the System Center Presence program.