FiveRuns, whose name comes from the founder’s favorite childhood fishing hole, has left the world of beta releases (now 1.0) with its open-source Systems Management product, “complete with Web 2.0 richness and usability.” According to FiveRuns, its “approach to systems management utilizes open-source technologies, such as Ajax, Ruby and Ruby on Rails to deliver a sleek, hosted application.” Because IT professionals must typically manage both open-source and proprietary environments, FiveRuns' philosophy is to support these heterogeneous environments through a single interface. FiveRuns also claims that businesses of all sizes can benefit from its products. Other features include software-as-a-service-based monitoring, allowing users the flexibility to subscribe to the appropriate level of service as infrastructure levels change, as well as automated configuration discovery and auto-baseline thresholds to keep implementation time to a minimum. Free support for the product is available through FiveRuns.net, a community of users that includes troubleshooting advice. A free 30-day trial of FiveRuns is available by signing up on the company’s Web site.