Well, since Joey asks, I do have an opinion on this "Microsoft (hearts) Novell" thing. And, he's right, it's more of the eye-glazing, important-for-enterprise-IT nature than really interesting for normal people stuff.
Microsoft's embrace of Novell's SUSE Linux looks like they're extending an olive branch to open source, but may really just be a step towards extinguishing Red Hat and VMware.
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.”
The agreement begins with patent cross-coverage. Microsoft and Novell each pledge not to assert their patents against each other (or drag their customers into it) until at least 2012.
Technologically, the two companies say they will work together on three fronts. First, they'll collaborate on virtualization offerings. Second, they'll improve customers' ability to manage mixed SUSE and Windows environments by improving their respective system management tools and directory services. Third, they'll work on document format compatibility between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org.
Now, if this was truly a customer-driven initiative, it would make far more sense for Microsoft to have partnered with the company selling the top Linux distro in the enterprise, Red Hat. The fact that Microsoft's giving a boost to the #2 player (and just days after Oracle took a kick at Red Hat's core maintenance business) clearly begs for a second, cynical look. I think Alfresco's Matt Asay's onto something when he says:
Microsoft clearly does not view Novell as a threat. You don't link up with those that threaten to crush your business, not unless customers are demanding it. Given the relative market shares of Red Hat and Novell, it's a near certainty that if Linux and Windows integration is desirable (and it is, and customers are asking for it), then the most desirable partner for Microsoft (from a customer standpoint) would be Red Hat.
If SUSE gains from these agreements ("It's the Linux that Microsoft loves!"), it will come at the expense of Red Hat.
And while each element of this relationship is designed to, in some way, make life difficult for Red Hat, I think the virtualization aspect is also meant to address another of Microsoft's competitors. After all, as Mary Jo "All About Microsoft" Foley says, "Microsoft didn't need a special alliance with Novell in order to get Windows to run virtually on SUSE Linux or to make SUSE Linux to run on the Longhorn Server Hypervisor."
When you hear "Microsoft" and "virtualization" in the same sentence, it's usually a hint of Microsoft's pitched battle with VMware for the virtualization market. Thus far, Microsoft has had trouble dislodging the industry leader, but they're trying their damndest to change that with upcoming releases of Windows Server Longhorn and Windows Virtual Server. They're planning to optimize ("enlighten") how Windows Server Longhorn performs with their their "Viridian" hypervisor (all part of an ongoing overhaul of Windows Virtual Server), so a Windows guest OS will perform better than another guest OS (say, RHEL) running on Windows Virtual Server. VMware, of course isn't keen on Microsoft being able to tout a proprietary performance advantage for their server consolidation solutions. Does the Microsoft-Novell deal mean that SUSE will selectively be given access to Microsoft's optimizations, so that SUSE Linux outperforms Red Hat when running on a Viridian hypervisor? Not only would that ding Red Hat, it would also create some pain for VMware. (A related, but tangential question would be whether anything in this agreement will lead to a SUSE-controlled virtualization platform will be able to take advantage of Microsoft's Enlightenment API, thus allowing Windows Server Longhorn to run just as well on SUSE as it does when hosted on Windows Virtual Sever? That may mean licensing some very non-GPL code to XenSource, so we'll have to wait and see)
Destpite my getting into a speculative lather, I think this agreement nets out to a few things: Microsoft wants to put the boots to Red Hat, and if they can take on VMware too, so much the better. Novell's probably got intellectual property assets in operating systems (they own UNIX), networking, and office productivity that make them a formidable legal threat to Microsoft, so a patent truce is probably worth everyone's time. The technological points of collaboration as described don't seem so deep as to merit a formally announced relationship, so what gives? All we can do now is wait to see how it shakes out, and speculate in the interim.
Tags: Microsoft, Novell, Windows, Linux, SUSE, virtualization, VMWare, patents