Centeris CEO Barry Crist can rattle off a litany of reasons for why you should give his company's management software a whirl. But perhaps his most illustrative selling point is this: "What if your Linux administrator goes on vacation?"

The 2-year-old company, which is set to release the second version of its Likewise product next week, specializes in helping small and medium businesses manage Windows and Linux servers from a common Windows console, including the Microsoft Management Console. More specifically, the server and agent software enables Windows administrators to manage Linux systems and hook them into Active Directory while shielding them from the command-line interfaces and other intricacies of the open source operating system.

Version 2.0 features support for new server roles, including DNS and firewalls, whereas the company started with file, print and Web server support in the first edition launched at the start of the year.

Also new are more of what Crist calls power-user features. These are for administrators who aren’t necessarily spooked by Linux and want to use command-line interfaces or do SSH sessions to remotely manage Linux servers.

Keeping its eyes on the proliferating number of Linux distributions, Centeris has also reworked its software to dynamically support new iterations. Crist says it has become especially important to handle new 64-bit versions of Linux, as even small and medium enterprises are deploying or at least asking about them.

Centeris won’t divulge how many organizations are buying its software, though does boast that 4,500 different ones have downloaded its software for evaluation. The 35-person company is partnering with heavy hitters IBM, Microsoft, Novell and Red Hat to get its software into customers’ hands.

Industry watchers say that while a certain amount of integrated Windows/Linux management support can be had from management platform vendors, smaller companies, such as Centeris, are really focusing on the issue. Others in the market include Centrify, Qlusters and Quest, they say.

“Companies getting the most bang for the buck out of Linux have one team managing Linux and Windows,” says Andi Mann, a senior analyst at Enterprise Management Associates.

One organization sold on Centeris is the Nixa R-II School District in Missouri. “We really didn’t have any disagreement as a department on managing Linux through Windows, as we try not to fall into the pit of being ‘Linux guys’ or showing any bias that clouds our judgment with respect to our district goals and purpose,” says Charlie Staats, network support technician for the school district, which relies on more than 30 servers, including Linux, Windows and Mac machines.

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