Operations Manager Going Cross-Platform

Operations Manager 2007 (OM) will be able to manage non-Microsoft products and virtualized environments with updates planned from Microsoft and partners. Specifically, cross-platform extensions will enable OM to monitor some Unix and Linux environments without the need for third-party solutions, while connectors will allow interoperation with other management products, such as Hewlett-Packard (HP) OpenView and IBM Tivoli. Several partners will deliver management packs to help administrators manage virtualized systems. These and other developments could make OM and other Microsoft management products more useful for customers with heterogeneous environments and more competitive in the enterprise system management market.

OM (full name System Center Operations Manager) enables administrators to centrally monitor the health and performance of other devices, particularly Windows servers and the applications that run on them, and it can take corrective actions automatically based on customizable rules and scripts. Management packs provide models of the way systems should function and provide other information useful to operators when troubleshooting problems on systems such as Exchange Server. OM 2007 SP1 was released in Feb. 2008 and will be updated in mid-2008 to run on and monitor Windows Server 2008.