Novell & Microsoft: What Do You Think?

Novell Cool Solutions: Tip

Digg This - Slashdot This Posted: 1 Nov 2006

Novell and Microsoft Collaboration

Microsoft Corp. and Novell Inc. today announced a set of broad business and technical collaboration agreements to build, market and support a series of new solutions to make Novell and Microsoft products work better together. The two companies also announced an agreement to provide each other's customers with patent coverage for their respective products. These agreements will be in place until at least 2012. Under this new model, customers will realize unprecedented choice and flexibility through improved interoperability and manageability between Windows and Linux.

"They said it couldn't be done. This is a new model and a true evolution of our relationship that we think customers will immediately find compelling because it delivers practical value by bringing two of their most important platform investments closer together," said Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. "We're excited to work with Novell, whose strengths include its heritage as a mixed-source company. Resolving our patent issues enables a combined focus on virtualization and Web services management to create new opportunities for our companies and our customers."

Under the agreement, Novell is establishing clear leadership among Linux platform and open source software providers on interoperability for mixed-source environments. As a result, Microsoft will officially recommend SUSE Linux Enterprise for customers who want Windows and Linux solutions. Additionally, Microsoft will distribute coupons for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server maintenance and support, so that customers can benefit from the use of an interoperable version of Linux with patent coverage as well as the collaborative work between the two companies.

"Too often technology companies ask their customers to adapt to them. Today we are adapting to our customers," said Ron Hovsepian, president and CEO of Novell. "Microsoft and Novell are enabling customers to take advantage of each other's products where it makes sense in their enterprise infrastructure. We jointly believe that our business and patent agreements make it possible to offer the highest level of interoperability with the assurance that both our companies stand behind these solutions."

Read more about it, and view the recorded webcast of the announcement here.

Reader Comments

• The survey asks far too few questions. Specifically, it asks only how important each of the agreement's are and not how well respondents rate the deal. You should certainly be asking whether the agreement would make it more (or less) likely to use or recommend Novell products and SUSE Linux and why.
• Please don't sell out to Microsoft for your own good. Microsoft has this habit of screwing their partners. Check the history if you don't believe it.
• I'm not sure what I think yet, apart from an overarching feeling of suspicion and dread. Whether this will be asuaged or not in the near future remains to be seen. At the moment I frequently feel that Novell has 'sold out' the entire community, then occasionally I believe that perhaps it's the best thing that could have happened. I've been a vey happy Novell user for about a year - ever since I initially began to implement Linux, in my case exclusively. It seems to have come so far without Microsoft, I cannot help feeling that this borders on the pointless and possibly 'dangerous'. Perhaps tomorrow I may feel differently again. As you can see at the moment I am completely confused, though I have a natural tendancy to bault at the notion that this is a good idea.
• Its not a "cool solution", its not a "tip", its a press release! Keep the press releases on the press release site guys.
• I switched to Linux to get away from Microsoft.
• I'm going to support that netware will get kicked out.
• I think that it is a great move for both Microsoft and Novell. It would be a mistake for either company to think that their operating system is the solution to every problem. In reality, customers use a mix of operating systems to meet their objectives and anything Microsoft and Novell can do to better integrate the products would be great.
• The KILLER APP will be MS Office for SuSE Linux. Should Microsoft release the MS Office for Linux as they did for Mac, both sides win. They can still sell their product to an untapped market. All business related corp.s will pickup Linux Desktop and MS Office. That'll be the plan which will close the gap between Vista and its incredible hardware requirements, and average Joe's PC which can not run Vista, but needs more bells and whistles from XP like OS. Novell's SuSE Linux Desktop is everything that one would need, except the fact that it does not run Microsoft apps. You can run them using simulation software, but if you read the licensing agreement on MS Office, it says that you can not install MS Office on a non-Microsoft O/S. There goes your corporate solution for deploying SuSE Linux Desktop and MS Office in your company. We can sit down and argue that OpenOffice is as good as MS Office, but as you see in the press release, one of the issues they'll be working on is Document Compatibility. This agreement closes that loophole and allows SuSE Linux Desktop to run MS Apps either as a native app, or using XEN Virtualization technology.
• Sorry for your loss and we will miss you. Regards Kevin Power CET
• I think this is going to open a lot of new doors not only for suse but for the entire linux community, I only wish that all this other users in the community that are bad mouthing this whole deal would look @ it in the growing even more terms, but as in the regular life there is always people that just because they don't like an idea they think everyone has to do the same.

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