The System Center Management Pack catalogue moves to PinPoint
Microsoft have moved the Management pack catalogue to the new Pinpoint format:
http://pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-US/systemcenter/managementpackcatalog
Its a little confusing at first, but I wanted to give you some tips for finding the MP you want in case you are struggling.
1. Click on the link above, or goto http://www.microsoft.com/opsmgr and click on the "Find Management Packs and Connectors" link half way down the right side of the page.
2. On the right hand side you will see a section entitled "System Center Catalogs by Product", choose the product you want such as "Operations Manager 2007 R2"
3. Finally type in the MP your after such as "Exchange 2010", and youy should find a list of everything that is available for the product i.e. Exchange, Forefront.
To be honest, the new catalogue has been met with mixed feedback from both customers and MVP's and Filip Lazar who has been working on the transition on the System Center product team fielded some early question's on it and had this to say explaining the move:
"Pinpoint is a team within Microsoft that is going to host solutions across numerous product groups. It was introduced at PDC 09, and is the general direction for the catalogs of a lot of products.
So why did we end up using this platform?
- Removing the need to manage the old custom MP catalog frees up dev and test resources for the System Center teams. This means that we can focus on our core competency, which is creating a better management products for you and working on MPs.
- Web design is Pinpoint's core competence. The team is staffed to improve the site and has a good pipeline. It's this pipeline that will give the catalog a good future. Although I cannot discuss all aspects of this pipeline, you'll see new things appearing such as customer facing MP ratings, which are meant to add value to the community and address requests that we have received in the past.
- The new catalog removes Microsoft as a bottleneck and gives you direct control over listing MPs. While we still approve/deny MPs from showing up in the catalog, it a first step in opening up that black box that you encounter once you request an MP be listed, or if you are looking to find a market for MPs you have created.
- Pinpoint will offer us a way to start getting parity between what you see in the In-Product Catalog (R2 for now), and the web experience. This is something we're looking to leverage in the next version of the product as well.
The pinpoint change is needed to help us gain the benefits above, but we are aware that functionality has changed drastically, and some tasks can no longer be performed. My goal is to work on improving the experience to make sure that the new site adds value. However, I do want to call out that the part of the site that is a paradigm shift (bing type search versus old excel list type search) which does take some getting used to regardless."
If you have any thoughts on this new site or there is anything that you would like to see different then please let me know and I will pass your feedback along.