In a crowded field of 22 management, monitoring, and analysis products, HP OpenView Operations for Windows stands as the clear leader, capturing 17 percent of readers' votes. The award confirms the continuing popularity of HP's Windows systems management product: HP OpenView Operations for Windows also took first place as this year's best monitoring and alerting software product and won two awards in last year's Readers' Choice. HP OpenView Operations for Windows is geared toward managing heterogeneous enterprise environments and provides event management; performance monitoring; and automated alerting, reporting, and graphing for Windows, Linux, and UNIX applications and systems. A distinctive feature of HP OpenView Operations for Windows is its Smart Plug-in (SPI) management modules, which provide problem-specific analysis and diagnosis for particular applications and platforms, such as Microsoft Exchange Server and Active Directory (AD). The product also provides a graphical, color-coded Service Map that you can use to view IT infrastructure components and the business services to which they're linked.