Microsoft has announced the general availability of System Center 2022, the company's suite of tools for managing and running data centres, following on from Windows Server 2022.
System Center 2022 includes updates to almost the entire suite, including System Center Operations Manager (SCOM), Virtual Machine Manager (VMM), System Center Orchestrator (SCORCH), Service Manager (SM), and Data Protection Manager (DPM).
It's a lot of buzzwords, but if you're in the business of running a data centre that uses Windows then this should be music to your ears.
Microsoft System Center 2022
The list of new features is actually fairly short, mostly because Microsoft has focused on making everything else work that much better. The company says users can expect upgrades to collaboration, facilitating permissions, and working across multiple data centres at once.
As The Register points out, System Center 2022 can now manage Azure Stack HCI 21H2 or VMware 7.0 hosts, which is something of a catching up exercise, rather than setting trends.
Perhaps the biggest news is somewhat buried at the end of the announcement Microsoft is bringing hybrid management to Azure.
"We will be bringing hybrid capabilities with System Center 2022 to standardize management and governance across on-premises and cloud environments while reusing your existing investments in System Center," the company says.
Race for the cloud
The latest release is another example of the huge battle raging in the cloud services space, especially between Microsoft and Amazon.
According to one estimate, AWS is ahead, clocking in at 33% market share, followed by Azure, with 21%, and Google Cloud, with 10%. The rest of the market comprises Alibaba (6%), IBM (4%), Salesforce (3%), Tencent (3%), and Oracle (2%).
Microsoft's secret weapon is their pre-existing relationships with huge enterprises that are already locked into the Windows ecosystem. Leveraging these relationships has been incredibly profitable for Microsoft, especially when pushing its subscription suite of services.
AWS, however, has welcomed a whole new customer base: developers and startups, some of which have grown to be absolutely massive.
There's everything to play for and Server Center 2022 is a step in the right direction for Microsoft and Azure.
