Q&A: Microsoft VP says customers disliked System Center vision

Computerworld - LAS VEGAS -- Kirill Tatarinov, vice president of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows and enterprise management division, said customers weren't thrilled about the company's plans to integrate its Systems Management Server (SMS) and Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) software into a product called System Center. So Microsoft scrapped those plans and is now using System Center as a "family name" for a set of management products -- including three new ones due out in the second half of the year, Tatarinov told Computerworld during an interview yesterday.
Tatarinov discussed the System Center decision and provided an update on the Dynamic Systems Initiative that Microsoft launched two years ago at its annual Management Summit. Excerpts follow:
What happened with the change in your System Center strategy? Today it's not one product, as we originally announced two years ago. It's a family name. Let's think about individual customer personas in enterprise IT. There are individual roles -- desktop administrator, server monitoring person, change-configuration person, help desk person, backup person. Most of the people are accustomed to individual products, and they like those products, and they invested in knowledge in those products. Those people want to continue to use those products. The last thing those people want is the vendor of their choice -- and in this case, the vendor is Microsoft and the products are SMS and MOM -- to come to them and say, "Hallelujah. The world has changed. It's one big blob for everything." They didn't like it, and that's what they told us. ... And we changed our approach to follow customer needs.
When did you make the decision? Approximately a year ago. ... We probably didn't communicate it as crisply and clearly as we should have. ... We had a plan. We made a decision to change the plan. It took us time to regroup and come out with a new plan, and through the process, we didn't want to publicly communicate until this plan was completely baked and fully solidified.
Will there be a System Center suite that customers can buy? Currently there is no plan for that.
There's no licensing plan for the whole group of products? There is no licensing model. There are some promotions that will be offered to our enterprise customers. If they own Software Assurance -- whether it's [through] an Enterprise Agreement or separately purchased -- they will get a promotion for a period of time. ... And as we get closer to the rollout dates and announce pricing for those individual products, we will