System Center Essentials RC1 are now available on the Microsoft Connect site.

What’s New in Essentials RC1?
Capabilities:

Support for upgrading from WSUS 2.0 and 3.0 Emailed Daily Health Report Automatic scheduled discovery of computers from Active Directory Enhanced network monitoring of SNMP-enabled network devices including a network topology diagram view Remote Control support for remote control of managed client and server computers Ability to import Update catalogs from third-party software publishers SQL Services based reporting on monitoring, hardware and software inventory Setup experience improvements for SQL Server selection and file locations More management packs including support for Exchange 2003, Dynamics CRM 3.0, and Active Directory

Enhanced Platform support

non-English US locales
installing Essentials on x64 servers
managing Windows Vista
managing x64 systems
Support for managing systems in multiple domains in a single forest