Novell is working with Microsoft to develop advanced Linux management platforms that will allow customers to simplify the management of mixed IT environments.

Building on their existing technical collaboration agreement, Microsoft and Novell will work with industry standards and open source components to standardise management capabilities.

"Customers are looking for solutions that enable them to manage heterogeneous IT environments," said Brad Anderson, general manager of the Management and Services Division at Microsoft.

"Microsoft is pleased to extend our System Center suite to offer management for Linux distributions like SuSE Linux Enterprise.

"Microsoft is using, and intending to contribute enhancements to, the OpenPegasus Project's Common Information Model Object Manager, and delivering interoperable providers to the open source community which collect management data and make it accessible to management services."

As part of the collaboration, Novell will work with Microsoft to enhance the System Center Operations Manager 2007 Cross Platform Extensions, which Microsoft announced earlier this week.

This extension utilises industry standards such as WS-Management and open source software to deliver Linux and Unix management.

In addition, Novell plans to use the open source interoperable providers to extend the Linux management capabilities of its Novell ZENworks systems management products.

"Novell has previously outlined that it intends to support the use of open source and open standards in its ZENworks solutions to simplify and standardise systems management," said Joe Wagner, senior vice president and general manager for Novell Systems and Resource Management.