The Microsoft Management Summit announbced that the System Center 2012 beta is now available for download.
The biggest backend changes for administrators include a new application model and a new hierarchy model.
New features are focused on the movement towards end users and IT departments working together rather than having IT departments dictate to end users. It involves trends like employee owned devices (BYOC) and anywhere/anytime application and data access.
- User-centric application-delivery model that is device independent but considers user device affinity
- Intelligent self-service application delivery is based on policies that may be triggered by location, device, etc. This leverages application virtualization and streaming techniques.
- Support for mobile devices (iPad, iPhone, Symbian, Android, Windows Phone)
- Native delivery for Citrix XenApp and App-v (lots of other Citrix integration too)
- Application supercedence that automatically upgrades applications to the latest version
- VDI-aware (pooled or personal) application delivery
- Management integration with Forefront Endpoint Protection for deployment and update management (no more parallel update infrastructures), as well as reporting
- Automatic security and configuration compliance remediation
