Patent ID: 7483978

Claim:
A method for providing a unified user interface for managing a plurality of heterogeneous computing environments, the method comprising: displaying at least a portion of a framework user interface, the framework user interface comprising common functionality and a standard layout for a unified user interface for managing a plurality of heterogeneous computing environments; displaying a listing of a subset of the plurality of heterogeneous computing environments, each of the plurality of heterogeneous computing environments being modeled by one or more objects, each object corresponding to a particular computing environment; and in response to an interaction request with respect to a particular computing environment, applying an appropriate plug-in, based on a mapping of the object that corresponds to the particular computing environment to the appropriate plug-in, to perform the requested interaction, each plug-in corresponding to a type of computing environment and operable to facilitate display of information for managing a computing environment of the type corresponding to the plug-in.