Anderson boasts that two-thirds of enterprises with at least 500 PCs use System Center, and says Microsoft manages more Windows servers than any other vendor, even the ones in the . 

But he also says nearly 20% of customers who use System Center Operations Manager to oversee Windows implementations are also using it to manage non-Windows servers, predominantly Linux.

"If we're going to come in and were going to deliver value on a platform, we want to deliver the same amount of value on that platform as we do on Windows," he said.

Target, a Microsoft customer that uses Hyper-V to virtualize Windows and also has a small SUSE Linux deployment, says it's relieved that Microsoft is ramping up support for multiple operating systems.

"They now seem to really understand that their customers have very heterogeneous implementations, different operating systems, and they are changing System Center to be able to manage endpoints that are running non-Windows operating systems," said Target's Brad Thompson, director of IT infrastructure engineering. "It's nice to know that over time, as our footprint of devices in the stores evolve and there's the potential to have non-Windows operating systems, that our management suite is extensible enough to manage those as well."