Microsoft's slow but steady march into Unix and Linux territory took a small step forward today, with them announcing some new beta products aimed at Unix/Linux system management. “Systems Center Operations Manager 2007 Cross Platform Extensions” is the first of them. Quite a mouthful, the name, though the goal of the software is just as big. Their “Interoperability team” is creating the software to act as a GUI frontend to managing Linux and Unix systems, which may not go over too well with Unix admins in the world today.

Little else is mentioned about the software, though you can download it from Microsoft Connect.