According to Alan Murray, vice president of product management at Novell, “Today's data centers are heterogeneous environments with multiple masters and stakeholders, but in order for any organization to make decisions or analyze business performance these mixed environments need to work together simply and seamlessly. Novell is a strong supporter of the Configuration Management Database Federation standard, because it facilities the interoperability of data from multiple points of view. With a comprehensive view of the entire IT environment, administrators can utilize configuration data to streamline management tasks resolve issues and most importantly effectively manage the components in their IT infrastructure.”