You’ve got a business application that is distributed among many systems and is accessible anywhere by PC, mobile devices, and through a browser. Now you need to manage this complex system and keep it safe from malware. As the complexity of your application grows, management and security can take more and more time for your IT organization. The Microsoft Application Platform offers solutions for both of these: System Center products automate many IT management tasks, and Forefront products provide malware protection for clients, servers, and networks.

Microsoft® System Center Products

System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2

System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2 comprehensively assesses, deploys, and updates servers, client computers, and devices-across physical, virtual, distributed, and mobile environments. Optimized for Windows, it is the best choice for gaining enhanced insight into and control over IT systems.

System Center Configuration Manager, tightly integrated with Windows 7 and optimized for Windows in general, maximizes infrastructure investments and drives greater efficiency. Used globally for configuration management by more enterprises than any other solution, System Center Configuration Manager is the solution to ensure confidence whether your organization is large or small. System Center Configuration Manager intelligently automates IT systems management to reduce costs and to help organizations manage their global infrastructures more quickly and more precisely to improve visibility and control.

System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2

System Center Operations Manager is the end-to-end service-management product that is the best choice for Windows because it works seamlessly with Microsoft software and applications, helping organizations increase efficiency while enabling greater control of the IT environment.

System Center Data Protection Manager

Data Protection Manager seamlessly uses disk, tape, and cloud-based repositories to deliver an easy-to-use and best-of-breed backup and recovery solution for Windows environments from Microsoft. Windows customers of all sizes can rely on Microsoft to provide a scalable and manageable protection solution that is cost-effective, secure, and reliable.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2

Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2008 R2 helps enable centralized management of physical and virtual datacenter infrastructure, increased server utilization, and dynamic resource optimization across multiple virtualization platforms. It includes end-to-end capabilities such as planning, deploying, managing, and optimizing the virtual infrastructure.

System Center Essentials

System Center Essentials is specifically designed for midsize businesses (up to 500 client computers and 30 servers). System Center Essentials provides a unified management product that enables IT pros in midsize organizations to proactively manage their IT environment with increased efficiency.

System Center Service Manager

System Center Service Manager 2010, a new addition to the System Center suite of products, delivers an integrated platform for automating and adapting IT Service Management best practices to your organization's requirements. By orchestrating and unifying the knowledge across the System Center suite, Service Manager helps IT continuously adapt to new business requirements while reducing cost, lowering time to resolution, and helping to align IT to the business.

Microsoft® Forefront™ Products

Microsoft Forefront security products help deliver protection, access, and management, built around user identity and integrated with a highly secure, interoperable platform as part of the business ready security strategy. The Microsoft Forefront products & related technologies are:

Security Management

• Forefront Identity Manager 2010 - Changes the current state of identity management by providing powerful end user self-service capabilities.
• Forefront Server Security Management Console - Allows administrators to easily and efficiently manage the configuration, deployment, updating, and reporting for Forefront server security products throughout the enterprise.

Protection & Access

• Forefront Client Security - Unified virus and spyware protection for business desktops, laptops, and server operating systems.
• Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server - Provides fast and effective detection of viruses, worms, spyware and spam by integrating multiple scanning engines from industry-leading security partners in a single solution.
• Forefront Online Protection for Exchange - Layered technologies to actively help protect businesses’ inbound and outbound e-mail from spam, viruses, phishing scams, and e-mail policy violations.
• Forefront Protection 2010 for SharePoint - helps protect Microsoft Office SharePoint server 2010 deployments from viruses, unwanted files, and inappropriate content.
• Forefront Security for Office Communication Server - Provides fast and effective protection against IM-based malware through multiple scanning engines from industry-leading security partners.
• Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010 - Enables businesses by allowing employees to safely and productively use the Internet for business without worrying about malware and other threats.
• Forefront Unified Access Gateway 2010 - Delivers comprehensive, secure remote access to corporate resources for employees, partners, and vendors on both managed and unmanaged PCs and mobile devices.

Related platform technologies include:

• Windows Identity Foundation - Enables .NET developers to externalize identity logic from their application, improving developer productivity, enhancing application security, and enabling interoperability.
• Active Directory Technologies - Provides the means to manage the identities and relationships that make up your organization's network.
• Network Access Protection - A policy enforcement platform built into the Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 operating systems, Network Access Protection enables you to better protect network assets by enforcing compliance with system health requirements.