[1] The product allows monitoring and alert resolution of server and client computers, applications, hardware, and network devices.
[2] Microsoft has made the decision not to deliver any further full version releases of System Center Essentials.
The SCE server applies filtering rules to alerts as they arrive; a rule can trigger some notification to a human, such as an e-mail or a pager message, or trigger some other workflow intended to correct the cause of the alert in an appropriate manner.
SCE uses the term management pack to refer to a set of filtering rules specific to some monitored application.
While an administrator role is needed to install agents, configure monitored computers and create management packs, rights to simply view the list of recent alerts can be given to any valid user account.