Microsoft Announces Additional Details about System Center Advisor (formerly codename “Atlanta”)

March 24, 2011

At the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) Summit last November, Microsoft announced System Center codename “Atlanta.” Since then, you have told us how excited you are about this new service; a cloud-based service that enables IT pros to assess their SQL Server configuration and proactively avoid problems. This excitement showed in your tremendous participation during the beta program. With that, today we’re excited to share more news about project Atlanta.

At this week’s Microsoft Management Summit conference, Microsoft announced the following details about System Center codename “Atlanta:”

· System Center codename “Atlanta” is now named System Center Advisor

· The Release Candidate of System Center Advisor is now available

· With commercial availability targeted for the second half of calendar year 2011, System Center Advisor will only be available as a benefit of Software Assurance for entitled server products, including SQL Server. That means, this service brings new support and maintenance value to Software Assurance coverage at no additional cost!

As huge fans of SQL Server, we’re very excited about the value System Center Advisor brings to our customers’ environments. The following sums up the key benefits you can experience with System Center Advisor:

· Proactively avoid problems: Increase awareness and proactively avoid problems with server deployments through ongoing assessment and alerting of configuration from a cloud service

· Help resolve issues faster: Resolve issues faster by providing Microsoft or internal support staff current and historical views into configuration to get up to date solutions for any issues

· Help reduce downtime: Help reduce downtime and improve performance of servers through proactive scanning for known configuration issues and comparison with best practices.

For more information on System Center Advisor or to sign up for FREE access to the Release Candidate, visit http://www.systemcenteradvisor.com.