Novell e Microsoft annunciano una partnership tecnologica
Microsoft verso Linux o viceversa?
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03-11-2006 00:00:01 - Letto 44 volte
(Linux Valley) - Novell e Microsoft hanno reso noto di aver siglato una partnership, comprendente accordi commerciali e tecnologici, e la creazione di nuove soluzioni per permettere ai prodotti Novell e Microsoft di lavorare meglio assieme. Questo accordo durera' fino al 2012.
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Microsoft and Novell Announce Broad Collaboration on Windows and Linux Interoperability and Support
Microsoft company logo. (PRNewsFoto)
REDMOND, WA USA 02/18/2005
Companies Also Announce a Patent Agreement Covering Proprietary and Open
Source Products
REDMOND, Wash., and WALTHAM, Mass., Nov. 2 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ --
Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) 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(R) 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(R) and
Linux.
(Logo:
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20000822/MSFTLOGO )
"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."
Agreement Has Broad Scope
The two companies will create a joint research facility at which
Microsoft and Novell technical experts will architect and test new software
solutions and work with customers and the community to build and support
these technologies. The agreement between Microsoft and Novell focuses on
three technical areas that provide important value and choice to the
market:
-- Virtualization. Virtualization is one of the most important trends in
the industry. Customers tell Microsoft that virtualization is one way
they can consolidate and more easily manage rapidly growing server
workloads and their large set of server applications. Microsoft and
Novell will jointly develop a compelling virtualization offering for
Linux and Windows.
-- Web services for managing physical and virtual servers. Web services
and service-oriented architectures continue to be one of the defining
ways software companies can deliver greater value to customers.
Microsoft and Novell will undertake work to make it easier for
customers to manage mixed Windows and SUSE Linux Enterprise
environments and to make it easier for customers to federate Microsoft
Active Directory(R) with Novell eDirectory.
-- Document format compatibility. Microsoft and Novell have been focusing
on ways to improve interoperability between office productivity
applications. The two companies will now work together on ways for
OpenOffice and Microsoft Office system users to best share documents,
and both will take steps to make translators available to improve
interoperability between Open XML and OpenDocument formats.
"As a result of this collaboration, customers will now be able to run
virtualized Linux on Windows or virtualized Windows on Linux," said Jeff
Jaffe, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Novell.
"Customers continually ask us how they can consolidate servers with
multiple operating systems through virtualization. By working together,
Novell and Microsoft enable customers to choose the operating system that
best fits their application and business needs."
The patent cooperation agreement enables Microsoft and Novell to give
customers assurance of protection against patent infringement claims. It
gives customers confidence that the technologies they use and deploy in
their environments are compliant with the two companies' patents.
As part of this agreement, Microsoft will provide a covenant not to
assert its patent rights against customers who have purchased SUSE Linux
Enterprise Server or other covered products from Novell, and Novell will
provide an identical covenant to customers who have a licensed version of
Windows or other covered products from Microsoft.
"Both companies had to think creatively about how to create an
intellectual property bridge between the two worlds of open source and
proprietary software," said Brad Smith, senior vice president and general
counsel of Microsoft. "This bridge is built on respect for the innovations
of each company and the open source community, and a passion for what we
can deliver for our customers together."
Customer and Partner Reaction
Microsoft and Novell announced the new alliance at an event attended by
several customers and partners.
"We applaud Novell and Microsoft in their efforts to provide greater
Windows and Linux interoperability," said Paul Otellini, president and
chief executive officer of Intel Corporation. "Customers want solutions
that meet their individual needs, and higher levels of software
interoperability give them the ability to more easily make the best
choices."
"Windows and Linux are extremely important to our enterprise customers
and the industry, and AMD strongly supports both," said Hector Ruiz,
chairman and chief executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices. "This
agreement by Novell and Microsoft helps customers bridge the gap between
these platforms, giving them greater flexibility in doing what works best
for them. This is a great example of vendors working together to resolve
complexity so their customers don't have to."
"This technology and business collaboration provides a model that
allows Microsoft and Novell to develop new solutions to enable open source
and proprietary software to work better together in a mixed-source
environment," said Shane Robison, executive vice president and chief
strategy and technology officer at HP. "We applaud these two companies for
doing the hard work to build a bridge between Windows and Linux."
"IBM encourages more industry endorsement of mixed-source solutions
that promote open standards," said Steve Mills, senior vice president and
group executive at IBM Software. "Microsoft support for interoperability
with the industry-standard OpenDocument Format is most welcome. Open
documents give customers choice and help unlock broad industry creativity,
allowing access to a new generation of innovative applications. Our view
continues to be that interoperability and choice are key values that
customers demand and deserve."
"We are pleased to see that Novell and Microsoft have come together to
address customer needs with heterogeneous operating environments," said
Kevin Kettler, CTO at Dell Inc. "As an industry leader in the IT market, we
are excited to see the technology investments being made around
virtualization and interoperability by both companies with this agreement."
"SAP has been the first enterprise application vendor to run our apps
on Linux, while we have more Windows-based deployments than any other
platform," said Shai Agassi, president of Product and Technology at SAP.
"Today's announcement means that customers can now choose their preferred
operating system for each part of their SAP implementation with the
confidence that the systems will have strong interoperability and be
supported by SAP, Novell and Microsoft -- both companies being strong SAP
partners."
"One of the key challenges in government is IT interoperability," said
Thomas Jarrett, secretary of the Department of Technology and CIO of the
state of Delaware. "We commend Microsoft and Novell for their collaboration
and their efforts to build bridges in the interoperability area, which will
help government to better serve our customers, our business community and
our citizens."
Good for the Open Source Community
Novell officials noted that one of their priorities in working toward
the agreement with Microsoft was making sure the agreement made sense for
the open source community. As part of today's agreement, Novell and
Microsoft are announcing three important commitments. First, Microsoft will
work with Novell and actively contribute to several open source software
projects, including projects focused on Office file formats and Web
services management. Second, Microsoft will not assert its patents against
individual noncommercial open source developers. And third, Microsoft is
promising not to assert its patents against individual contributors to
OpenSUSE.org whose code is included in the SUSE Linux Enterprise platform,
including SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop.
"Today's announcement by Microsoft and Novell marks a significant
milestone in the adoption of Linux," said Stuart Cohen, CEO of Open Source
Development Labs. "By choosing a course of co-opetition, Microsoft
acknowledges the critical role that open source plays today in an
enterprise IT infrastructure. We appreciate the role Novell is playing to
help bridge the gap between Microsoft and the open source community. We are
glad to see these two companies collaborating to further diminish the legal
threat posed to developers and customers by patent assertions. This is good
for customer confidence in Linux, the open source community and the broader
IT ecosystem."
Additional Announcement Details
Like many commercial transactions, the financial terms of the agreement
are not being disclosed at this time.
Under the technical collaboration agreement, the companies will create
a joint research facility and pursue new software solutions for
virtualization, management and document format compatibility. These are
potentially huge markets -- IDC projects the overall market for virtual
machine software revenue to be more than $1.8 billion by 2009, and the
overall market for distributed system management software to be $10.2
billion by 2010 -- and the companies believe their investment in
interoperability will make their respective products more attractive to
customers.
Under the patent cooperation agreement, both companies will make
upfront payments in exchange for a release from any potential liability for
use of each other's patented intellectual property, with a net balancing
payment from Microsoft to Novell reflecting the larger applicable volume of
Microsoft's product shipments. Novell will also make running royalty
payments based on a percentage of its revenues from open source products.
Under the business collaboration agreement, the companies will pursue a
variety of joint marketing activities to promote the adoption of the
technologies they are collaborating on. In addition, Microsoft will
purchase a quantity of coupons from Novell that entitle the recipient to a
one-year subscription for maintenance and updates to SUSE Linux Enterprise
Server. Microsoft will annually make available approximately 70,000 of
these coupons to customers, with a mix of priority and standard support
services. By providing its customers with these coupons, Microsoft is
enabling companies to benefit from the use of the new software solutions
developed through the collaborative research effort, as well as a version
of Linux that is covered with respect to Microsoft's intellectual property
rights.
The parties are assessing the accounting treatment for the agreements
and will provide information as required in the course of their filings
with the SEC.
For more information on SUSE Linux Enterprise from Novell, see
http://www.novell.com/linux .
For more information on Microsoft Windows, see
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass.
About Novell
Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) delivers Software for the Open
Enterprise(TM). With more than 50,000 customers in 43 countries, Novell
helps customers manage, simplify, secure and integrate their technology
environments by leveraging best-of-breed, open standards-based software.
With more than 20 years of experience, 4,700 employees, 5,000 partners and
support centers around the world, Novell helps customers gain control over
their IT operating environments while reducing costs. More information
about Novell can be found at
http://www.novell.com .
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft is the worldwide leader in software,
services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full
potential.
NOTE: Microsoft, Windows and Active Directory are either registered
trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or
other countries.
Novell and SUSE are registered trademarks and Software for the Open
Enterprise is a trademark of Novell, Inc. in the United States and other
countries. *Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the
trademarks of their respective owners.
SOURCE Microsoft Corp.
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