The System Center Essentials team is very pleased to announce the availability of the Release Candidate 1 software on the Microsoft Connect site. With the release of SCE RC1 in conjunction with Operations Manager 2007 RC2 you can now test providing managed services to your customers. This solution provides a single entry point for remote management over the internet for customers' server and client environments, leveraging Operations Manager 2007 as the service provider console.

This solution includes:
Support for remote management services over the internet without requiring a VPN
Remote Managed Services management pack
Customer centric service provider views and reports
Diagnostic tasks to troubleshoot problems remotely
Support for remote monitoring and centralized update management, software distribution and software and hardware inventory

To evaluate the System Center "Remote Managed Services" public beta, you will install Operations Manager 2007 RC2 at your service provider data center to provide the top-tier management experience and Essentials 2007 RC1 at your customer locations as the remote end-point for monitoring the customer's environment.