14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is pushing the next iteration of System Center Service Manager toward the first public testing milestone, slated for the fall of this year.
In this regard, the company has reached an important milestone on the way to the Beta, namely the delivery of the first Community Technology Preview.
Travis Wright, a Senior Program Manager on the System Center Service Manager product engineering team reveals that members of the Technology Adoption Program have already been invited to start testing System Center Service Manager 2012 CTP1.
This means that TAP customers and partners can take SCSM 2012 CTP1 out for a spin and test drive new features such as: Release Management with parallel activity support; Enterprise Data Warehouse with BI Analytics (OLAP); Periodic Notification support; improved PowerShell support; performance improvements; updated connectors to support SC Wave 12 and parent – child support for incident and release management.
The System Center Service Manager 2012 CTP1 bits are available for download via Microsoft Connect, however, they are only offered to a select group of TAP testers.
According to the software giant, it already has all the TAP testers it needs for CTP1, and no additional customers will be invited to test the development milestone.
“While this is not a public release it is an important milestone that will begin the external testing and feedback cycle. This milestone includes 20 of the 25 improvements we have planned for SCSM 2012 so we are nearly fully complete with the product already,” Wright explained, adding that the company plans to expand the testing pool in the third quarter of 2011.
“Just to answer a question I know somebody is bound to ask…. Sorry, the TAP program has long since been full. There will be a public beta of SCSM 2012 that will be feature complete in “Q3” CY 2011,” he said.