Regardless of whether you've heard of systemd or not, if you're a Linux sysadmin, you should read the following article:

• http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths

For a teeeeny-tiny bit of background: systemd was begun a couple years ago by Lennart Poettering (Red Hat) as a Linux-centric init framework (i.e., to replacle the classic SysVinit framework and its main contender, Upstart). Any thing more than that, you'll learn in the above article.