Companies Also Announce a Patent Agreement Covering Proprietary and Open
Source Products
REDMOND, Wash., and WALTHAM, Mass., Nov. 3 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ --
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.
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"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.
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