Today we'll talk a bit about a new product you may not have heard about - Remote Operations Manager. This is a hybrid application, and intended for the Service Provider; Remote Operations Manager (ROM) enables the Service Provider to use OpsMgr to deliver a managed services solution to their Essentials customers.

ROM integrates System Center components installed on the ROM service provider network (OpsMgr management group) and a customer network running the Essentials server.

Essentials itself is a new product - it is not the newest version of Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Workgroup Edition! Essentials combines the management and monitoring features of OpsMgr with a desktop component that includes software distribution and update support. Essentials can only support 30 monitored servers (31 including itself), so by design it is for use by the small or medium-sized organization.

OpsMgr becomes ROM by implementing architectural changes in the management group, importing the Service Provider management pack, and connecting Essentials to the service provider by converting a customer's Essentials server to Service Provider mode. An OpsMgr management group with the additional ROM features actually does not look any different in the Operations console, other than the new views added from the Service Provider management pack.

By itself, an Essentials server is an all-in-one OpsMgr management group, capable of importing management packs and monitoring computers and devices; just like an OpsMgr management group. Without ROM, Essentials is the primary and only monitoring engine in the small business' network. Using ROM, the primary monitoring engine becomes the remote instance of OpsMgr run by the ROM service provider.

ROM is only available for license to service providers that are Microsoft partners, you cannot purchase it though retail or volume license channels. Once configuration is complete on both ends, the Service Provider can remotely manage a small business' network, through OpsMgr.

-- Taken as a sneak preview from our forthcoming book, Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed. Thanks to our co-author John Joyner, who did the research and is our resident expert on ROM!