Microsoft announced that it would start delivering the first Beta for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 at TechEd EMEA in Barcelona earlier this month and the company delivered. As of today, November 20, the Beta bits of Operations Manager 2007 R2 are up for grabs via Microsoft Connect.

There are two ways for customers to access the development milestone. All participants in the Cross Cross Platform Extensions Beta will be able to download Operations Manager 2007 R2 Beta as an integral part of the same program. At the same time, the Operations Manager 2007 R2 Beta Connect program will also offer the Build. 

"Operations Manager 2007 R2 will deliver key new capabilities including cross-platform monitoring, service-level tracking, new and updated monitor templates (including process, OLE DB, NT Service, and Unix/Linux log file)," revealed Sacha Dawes, Sr. Technical Product manager, System Center. With the Beta Build out of the way Microsoft will move while working to deliver the product in the second quarter of 2009.

As said by Dawes, Operations Manager 2007 R2 brings to the table a single console designed to provide monitoring functionality for servers running Windows, Linux and Unix. According to Microsoft, the solution was tweaked in order to play well with mixed source environments. At the same time, the Redmond company has extended the application management when it comes down to data centers, while boosting the speed at which information can be accessed.

"The Operations Manager 2007 R2 beta integrates the functionality delivered with the Cross Platform Extensions Beta, which was originally made available at MMS 2008 in April. Work also continues on the Interoperability Connectors (which enable the sharing of information between Operations Manager and other management systems), and new betas of these will become available in December through the Operations Manager R2 Connect program," Dawes added.