Software > Systems ManagementEssentials

On Tuesday, Microsoft released to manufacturing System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. The final code will be shipped on November 1. The company bills the software as one-stop organization, allowing administrators to set up and deploy new virtual machines and manage hosts and other virtual infrastructure elements from one console.

Novell plans to publish later this month or in December the architecture document of FOSSA, its long-term strategy for the management and deployment of resources both within and outside the enterprise.

If you've been wondering how to manage the Apple iPhone 3G smartphones mushrooming on your network, wonder no more. Kace has updated its systems management appliance with beta software to put that Apple in the palm of your hand.

SolarWinds last week unveiled a free tool designed to help IT managers monitor a single VMware ESX Server and incorporated virtual server support into its Orion network management software to enable enterprises to better control larger virtual environments.

Naked home workers may be the stuff of fantasy, but flexible working is now a corporate reality. Ready availability of broadband combined with the reliability and speed of wireless communications has transformed home and remote working.

SDM Software next week will ship a Web-based interface for Microsoft's group-policy feature to ease the desktop management and maintenance of Vista and other Windows operating systems.

One new bit of code in Windows Mobile 6.1 makes this otherwise-minor release of Microsoft's handheld operating system a watershed for enterprise users.

Open source software has had a foothold in the enterprise monitoring sphere for almost as long as open source has existed. One only needs to look at the sheer ubiquity of small applications such as MRTG (Multi Router Traffic Grapher) and its RRDTool back end to see that. What we haven't had from open source is the big application -- the comprehensive, community supported open source enterprise management suite that provides the depth and breadth of functionality that businesses need and generally find in closed-source competitors. That is changing in leaps and bounds. In fact, open source enterprise monitoring solutions are evolving so quickly, we won't even try to declare a clear winner yet -- but we're working on it.