System Center Essentials 2010 (Essentials 2010) is a new management solution in the System Center family of IT systems management products specifically designed for midsized businesses. Essentials 2010:
- Provides a unified solution with a single console for managing a broad range of tasks across your physical and virtual servers, clients, hardware, software, and IT services for a unified experience.
- Enables you to proactively manage your IT environment, helping keep your system up-to-date with a solution that accelerates problem resolution and enables automation of system updates and data collection.
- Is easy to deploy and maintain helping simplify complex management tasks for increased IT efficiency.

Based on customer feedback we've received over the last couple of years, here’s what’s new in Essentials 2010:
- We've raised the number of Windows Server devices you can manage from 30 to 50.
- We built Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 technology right into the product, so that Essentials 2010 provides a single console and management solution for managing both your physical and virtual servers. This includes support for converting physical servers to virtual machines and support for live migration.
- The console has a new look and feel making it easier than ever to quickly check the health of your IT environment and address any issues.
- Installation and configuration are even easier with checks for prerequisites during installation and Group Policy checks for proper configuration.