System Center 2012 Wave

I thought I'd post a quick one on how the System Center 2012 stack is starting to line up and some bits to note for testing and in preparation for implementations.

At present we have the following table that shows the parts of the System Center stack available and their current release stage:

Configuration Manager	Release Candidate 1
Operations Manager	Release Candidate 1
Service Manager	Beta 1
Virtual Machine Manager	Release Candidate 1
Data Protection Manager	Beta 1
Orchestrator	Release Candidate 1
App Controller	Beta 1

All of the System Center solutions are undergoing a branding change.
If you haven't noticed, the branding has now changed to:
"System Center 2012 Product Name"

So this makes it:

• System Center 2012 Configuration Manager
• System Center 2012 Operations Manager
• System Center 2012 Service Manager
• etc etc etc....

A small change I'm sure you'll agree, but important in the long run as we start to see really tight integration between all the solutions, and the development and release schedules of all the parts of the System Center align up.
(Hopefully we'll also see the Start Menu program groups be consolidated together unlike the random scatterings it is at present)

SQL Collations between the solutions are also drawing together with the need for the following collations per solution:

Configuration Manager	SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
Operations Manager	SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
Service Manager	See: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh495583.aspx
Virtual Machine Manager	SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
Data Protection Manager	Unsure - Doesn't seem to specify
Orchestrator	SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
App Controller	SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS

Anyone else see the running theme here?
SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS seems now to be the de-facto SQL Collation for the System Center 2012 wave.

You can also expect SQL 2008 R2 to be the prefered SQL version, 2008 may be supported for some of them, but 2005 is definitely a no go.