Two thousand?

Gartner recently published a report with some interesting details on System Center Operations Manager (SCOM).  One of the three key findings:

Operations Manager 2007’s value diminishes when managing non-Microsoft IT elements, whether management is provided by Microsoft or a third party.

Sort of reminds me of the value of SCVMM-VirtualCenter integration, but that’s another topic.

Something that really caught my eye is that the product has racked up 4000 licenses in the year-and-a-half that it has been available.  But, if you know the product architecture, you would concur that most sites require several licenses, whether you run a business website or www.foxybingo.com. That implies about 2000 SCOM 2007 sites, to make a reasonable estimate.

Is that a lot?  Perhaps, since Gartner found one strength to be “A significant installed base.”

Consider this:  To take advantage of the highly-advertised SCVMM features like PRO Tips, topology diagrams and reporting (well, in 60 days…) you need to integrate with SCOM.  Does that mean that there are just a couple thousand environments out there that are actually ready to deploy Microsoft virtualization?

Are you one of the two thousand?  What about everyone else?  Read up on SCOM architecture and deployment just to get started with virtualization?  Doubtful.  For those with real work to do, today, take a look at VMware Infrastructure with a free 60-day trial.  You can use VMware DRS right away to intelligently place virtual machines on hosts and even move them around with zero downtime.  Kind of like PRO Tips, without the quick migration downtime and all the moving parts of SCOM:

Root Management Server?  Clusters?  Report Server?  Management Servers?  DW DB?  Agents?  Please pass the Tylenol.