in case you haven't heard, microsoft made a couple of announcements about scom at mms. the first one is about a new beta product called cross platform extensions which lets you manage unix/linux through openwsman, openpegasus (cimom), and ms supplied scom providers. this is good stuff for painting the heterogeneity picture. keep up with what they're doing at http://blogs.msdn.com/scxplat/ .
notes, ramblings, contemplations, transmutations, and otherwise ... on management and directory miscellanea.