Microsoft/Novell Get Increased Demand To Maximize It

UNIX Update, July 1, 2009

"The interoperability and intellectual property peace of mind supplied by Novell and Microsoft are valuable and significant," said Zhao Wei, manager of the IT department for State Grid Corporation of China. "That is something that other Linux vendors were just not able to provide. The collaboration between these companies is what is driving our consideration to standardize all of our Linux servers on Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, as this is the optimal distribution for interoperability with Microsoft Windows Server."

Novell and Microsoft have signed on more than 30 new Chinese subscribers over the past year, and similar interest is spreading quickly within the neighboring markets as well, with more than 20 new subscribers in Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan. A partial listing of these organizations can be found below.

"We believe that this collaboration will produce tangible cost-reduction benefits to every customer that is considering a dual-platform strategy based on Microsoft Windows Server and a single widely available Linux server distribution," said Leo Cheng, IT manager with Unitech Printed Circuit Board Corp., based in Taiwan. "In our opinion, Novell SUSE is the logical distribution of choice for existing Microsoft Windows Server customers that want both optimized virtualization solutions and extended systems management capabilities now and in the future."

Delivery of Real-World Interoperability Solutions

The business and legal aspects of the Novell-Microsoft agreement opened the door for the two companies to work together to develop technical interoperability solutions. Now, more than ever, these solutions offer significant value for customers running both Microsoft Windows Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

"The primary impetus for our joint Interoperability Lab was to increase the value we can deliver to customers," said Tom Hanrahan, director of the Open Source Technology Center at Microsoft, which includes the Microsoft-Novell Interoperability Lab in Cambridge, Mass. "We felt that it was critical to set up a collaborative environment dedicated to delivering better technical interoperability so that the testing and development work performed in the lab could directly influence features and capabilities as they are being engineered into our respective products."

The Interoperability Lab has already tackled projects spanning a wide range of customer-focused interoperability concerns, and continues to make progress through programs encompassing virtualization, systems management, server workload validation and rich media support. One such example is the development of Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, which, when it is released later this month, will extend the monitoring capabilities within Microsoft System Center Operations Manager R2 across seven SUSE Linux Enterprise services and enable customers to monitor both their Linux and Windows system environments through one console.