November Surprise: Microsoft-Novell Deal

Paula Rooney looks at the the details. Technical:

"The companies agreed to improve interoperability by enhancing and optimizing performance of Linux workloads on Microsoft's virtualization platform and conversely, virtualized Windows workloads that run on SUSE Linux Enterprise 10's Xen-based virtual platform.
But additionally, the two pledged to collaborate on Web service management and develop solutions that will help customers more easily manage, automate and provision distributed applications and virtualized workloads in mixed Windows-Linux sites."

Legal:

"(The) far reaching pact... contains a new "patent covenant" that will free their mutual customers from potential legal liabilities when deploying joint Windows-Linux solutions."

Business:

"Most surprising is Microsoft's commitment to distribute 70,000 coupons for SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 subscriptions to its customers that want to use Linux in Windows environments. As part of the deal, Microsoft and Novell also pledged to align their sales and marketing engines to promote use of Windows and SUSE Linux together."

On her blog, Barbara Darrow looks at one possible competitive threat: Oracle's Red-Hat initiative:

"Oracle rattled a lot of cages when it said it would support Red Hat Enterprise Linux cheaper than Red hat itself. In fact, it will offer the RHEL distribution--stripped of Red Hat trademarks and copyrights, natch—itself.
That move, if successful, could cut the ground out from under Red Hat, which makes its dough on support contracts. It could also, as pointed out by analyst Stuart Williams, thwart Microsoft's SQL Server enterprise thrust. The free linux plus near-free hardware sucks a lot of the cost out of a total Oracle enterprise database solution, making it more price-competitive w/ Microsoft's stack, said he and others."

UPDATE: Frank Ohlhorst looks at other winners and losers:

"The ability to seamlessly share documents between Office and Open Office will have the largest impact on the corporate desktop, while virtualization support will offer a major advantage to software developers. The management interoperability should reduce administrative overhead and help to improve solution providers' ROI for both operating systems.

How will all of this affect other Linux distributions? Only time will tell, but it does not bode well."

Posted by Joe Caponi at 10:03 AM, November 3, 2006

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