Novell and Microsoft Announce Interop Collaboration

Posted by Floyd Marinescu on Oct 15, 2006 02:41 PM

Community

.NET

Topics

Java plus .NET Integration ,

Web Services ,

Linux ,

Interop

Tags

Microsoft ,

Novell

Novell and Microsoft have announced a set of 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 over all goal of the agreement is greater interoperability and manageability between mixed Windows and Linux infrastructures.

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® 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.

“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.”

• Older >