introducing the long awaited operations manager 2007 r2!

i’m not sure if i’m bringing you any “news” since i’m usually the slowest blogger when it comes to release dates and such.  however, this is pretty monumental so it’s worth repeating.  for those of you who wish to espouse the market fluff to your boss, you can read that here.  it’s not worth repeating here as i could not compete with the geniuses that write that material for a living.

i started off with every intent of doing a full article on all the goodness of opsmgr 2007 r2.  however, when i started searching for material with actual figures, i noticed that apparently this is such big news that even “fire pants” mckenna wrote a blog post about it!  believe it or not, it’s pretty good.  quite entertaining.  i won’t do an injustice by trying to complete with it.

a lot has changed since 2007 when opsmgr first launched.  (good grief, i just realized how much time had passed.)  where i work, we were very slow to begin our rollout.  i mean we started when r2 beta came out.  still, it was fun to ask some of the other mvps how things were going for them.  i think one of my favorite conversations went something like …

“you haven’t upgraded yet?”

“nope, still waiting for funding.”

“consider yourself lucky.  don’t do it!”

(did i say upgrade?  -snicker-  there still is no upgrade from mom 2005.)  it’s gone through a service pack since then and now is on r2.  if you haven’t started, there’s a steep learning curve.  once you get beyond the concepts, though, the potential starts to open up.

i should warn you that when you open the console for the first time after upgrading to r2, you’re going to be presented with what appears to be the “black” theme in outlook.  :)  i guess black is the new black.  details are here at this link if you want to know more.