News Review: Now you can buy SuSE Linux from Microsoft: am I dreaming?
The Microsoft - Novell saga continues
Maybe Microsoft will stop selling Operating Systems???
I don't know if you found it a shock announcement, but it certainly confused me.
Released on 2nd November is the announcement that Novell and Microsoft have agreed a set of broad business and technical collaboration agreements that will help their customers realize unprecedented choice and flexibility through improved interoperability and manageability between Windows and Linux. There you have it. There is even a picture of Novell Inc. President and CEO Ronald W. Hovsepian and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer shaking hands an all smiles.
The agreement basically means that you can ask your Microsoft salesman to quote for X copies of SuSE under a reseller agreement.
What is happening?
Best of enemies / best of friends?
There is a saying that you should keep your friends close to you... and your enemies even closer. Well, Microsoft and Novell certainly come into that category.
Don't forget that Novell could be credited with creating one of the first practical file / print server, a workstation authentication mechanism, a small systems directory, a ... until these were trumped by Windows NT, and things like Active Directory. Even today, there are people who prefer Netware to AD and think that we should all be running token ring instead of NetBIOS (or whatever it is now called.
Don't forget Word Perfect, one of the really good early word processors (under MS-DOS), until Word began to become the de-facto standard.
I think the case has been made - Microsoft and Novell have a history of competition. So what does Microsoft do with competition? They either kill them off, or buy them out. So has Steve Ballmer gone soft?
Some of the small print...
On the technical side, the two companies will set up a facility where engineers will work on enabling co-location of Windows and Linux, using virtualisation technology. In addition, there will be common standards on web services management, interoperability between AD and the Novell Directory, and translators for MS Office XML file format and the Linux OpenDocument format.
But examine some of the detail, and you begin to see what is happening.
Firstly, the decision to sell SuSE via Microsoft is just a concession. I doubt if MS salesmen will be given priority commission rates on Linux sales. And Mr. Ballmer himself has been quoted as saying " If you've got a new application that you want to instance, I'm going to tell you the right answer is Windows, Windows, Windows." Pretty conclusive. So it appears that Novell will get precious little sales from this agreement.
What they do get is time. They have effectively bought off the giant by feeding him some scraps. In return for a percentage of the revenue from every SuSE license they sell, Microsoft has dropped any intellectual property legal actions they may have against Linux users.
So Microsoft gets some cash from SuSE sales (whether they contributed to the sale or not, they still get the money), and Novell gets some breathing space. I think Microsoft is the winner here.
Novell needs to take advantage of this calm before the storm. They have until 2012 (when the agreement may run out) to build sufficient impetus to be able to stand on their own two feet. Of course, that assumes that the agreement goes full term.
Some companies have been known to exit long-term agreements ahead of time...
Reviewed by Dennis Adams in November 2006
