Intel has unveiled plans to integrate its System Management Solution with Microsoft's System Centre Essentials 2007.

The integrated platform, announced at the TechEd IT Forum 2007 in Barcelona, aims to help speed up processes, increase automation and reduce service costs across all aspects of a company's IT resources.

The offering features a toolset specifically designed for SMEs that face IT challenges similar to their larger counterparts, but do not have the luxury of a dedicated IT department.

"System Centre Essentials 2007 is a unified management tool that enables midsize organisations to manage their IT environment with increased efficiency, " said Eric Berg, director of System Centre product management at Microsoft.

The combination includes a series of management applications to view and control all aspects of a computing environment from a single location and interface.

Users can monitor PC health and software status, as well as diagnose and resolve problems even when the operating system is not responding.

Other features include the ability to power up PCs or servers from a remote location to perform off-hours maintenance and provide access to system information even in the event of hardware failure.

"One of the biggest challenges for smaller businesses in terms of time and money is the management of PCs, servers and software on the network," said Brian Johnson, product marketing manager of the Enterprise Products and Services Division at Intel.
"Many critical tasks, such as patches and updates, must be performed during working hours when they can interrupt employees or cause server downtime.

"Intel and Microsoft are working together to help business of all sizes keep their IT infrastructure up to date and boost their security, compliance and uptime."