SCSM Roadmap and Future

Hello, everyone. I thought it was important to take some time to discuss a question that I get asked very frequently: "What is the current SCSM roadmap?" This is actually a simple answer, but it isn't as clearly stated as I would like it to be if I were a customer. So, here's my response to anyone with this question:

When System Center Configuration Manager was moved to a shorter semi-annual release cycle 2 years ago or so, it gave the PG the ability to develop features on a much shorter timeline so that the product could be compatible with new Windows client features. I think this made sense to most people. However, there was a lot of confusion about the remaining components of System Center and their supportability with Configuration Manager moving into this new release cadence on its own (e.g., which versions of Configuration Manager were compatible with each version of Service Manager).  So, a few months ago Microsoft announced that the remaining components of System Center (Including DPM, VMM, SCOM, SCSM and Orchestrator) would also be moving to a semi-annual release cycle, along with Windows Server. Here's the official release statement for 1801: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/first-system-center-semi-annual-channel-release-now-available

Why is this important? By releasing these products more frequently, the rest of System Center can now leverage the development agility that Configuration Manager has - meaning additional features and fixes released more frequently. On the flip side of that, this means the roadmap fundamentally changes as well. If features and fixes are being released semi-annually, it makes sense that the next set of features have about the same visibility. This means that the days of 3 year roadmaps for any System Center product are gone.

What does this mean for you? System Center Service Manager and Orchestrator are still being developed and are part of this new release cycle along with the rest of System Center. Contrary to what some have said, they are definitely not currently in End of Life and currently have no forecasted EOL. Some semi-annual updates will only have fixes and some will have additional functionality. The features that get added to the entire suite each cycle will depend on customer demand and will be prioritized as such.  The products which receive enhancements will likely vary each time. All products are therefore still fully supported.

Like many on-prem product groups, the SCSM team is currently working on incorporating more Azure and cloud service components into SCSM. Look at the service management connector for example: /en-us/azure/log-analytics/log-analytics-itsmc-overview

Hope this helps. :)

Comments

• Anonymous
  November 05, 2017
  "System Center Service Manager and Orchestrator are still being developed...." this is music to my ears!!
• Anonymous
  November 07, 2017
  Dear Chris,It's way too late. I don't believe that the community can be resurrected. After years silence, suddenly Microsoft is going to commit? I doubt that. SCSM isn't a cloud product.Orchestrator havn't had a single feature added for ages, same goes for SCSM.All the customers have been abandoning ship since the 2016 release.Sorry for the negativity, but I really think this is the reality. /N
  • Anonymous
    November 08, 2017
    I understand your point. In fact, I think some of our direction internally has been confusing over the past few years as products find their place in the overall vision. This post is intended to share the current state of the product, along with its inclusion in the ongoing improvement process for System Center, not to speculate on its long-term future. As far as your statement about customers leaving, I can't say that is the case. We have many customers deploying 2016 and upgrading from SCSM 2012 R2 to 2016 and a large percentage of Premier customers are happy with the product. Just want to clarify for anyone reading this that "All the customers have been abandoning ship since the 2016 release" is not accurate.
    • Anonymous
      December 04, 2017
      Hi Chris,Thanks for the answer.I really believe that most of the SCSM customers does not see the product as a long term solution, since it's getting so little attention from MS.If Microsoft took their SCSM customers seriously, they would fix bugs like: the authoring tool records your movement, adding enums to an existing DW cube is a nightmare, create a uservoice site for SCSM and add Actionlog entries to DW by default.I could come up with so many bugs and missing features, and also, why isn't orchestrator Powershell activites 64bit by default?Killing SCOrch is fine with me, but then make a SMA connector for SCSM.I hope the future for SCSM and SCO is brigther.Regards, Nikolaj