Microsoft - Novell Agreement
Posted on November 8, 2006
Filed Under IT Industry, Networking, Open Source/Freeware, Windows |
Open source advocates are standing up and paying attention to a deal announced between Microsoft and Novell on November 4, 2006. The two companies have announced a “broad collaboration” on Windows and Linux interoperability.
Novell was once the leader in networking software with it’s NetWare network operating system. In 2003 Novell purchased SuSE Linux and Ximian – an email, calendaring, contact management, etc, product that rivals Microsoft Outlook. Novell while remaining a decidedly commercial entity also is a major contributor to the open source community.
Microsoft on the other hand has traditionally been a vehement adversary of open source licensing. In many cases open source software runs on Linux based computers and in fact Linux is open source itself. Indeed, there are those who consider the term “open source” to be another term for Linux. Linux and other open source products are free to use and modify, and have gained immense popularity that Microsoft has seen as a threat.
Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer said during the announcement that the two companies recognize that their customers want more interoperability between Windows and Linux. Ballmer said that Microsoft and Novell would deliver and would collaborate in three key areas:
• Virtualization
• Management and
• Document format compatibility
Virtualization means running one operating system within another. Microsoft Virtual Server is a free download and virtualization technology will be a major component of future Windows Server releases. There’s no doubt that users will want to run Linux in virtual machines, and partnering with a major Linux vendor makes perfect sense for Microsoft.
In mixed environments where both Windows and Linux are used, managing both systems can be challenging. Novell and Microsoft have agreed to collaborate on ways to make managing mixed environments easier. This is a definite plus for Microsoft who will again, be faced with users running Linux in virtual machines on Windows servers.
In addition to the management of systems themselves, Microsoft and Novell have agreed to work toward enabling Windows Active Directory and Novell eDirectory to interoperate. This effort should allow Windows and SuSE based computers to interoperate on a network much more smoothly.
OpenOffice.org is an open source alternative to the Microsoft Office suite. OpenOffice.org is a mature product and there are versions available for Windows, Linux, Sun Solaris, Mac OS X, and FreeBSD. There are however only versions of Microsoft Office for Windows and Mac OS X.
Microsoft Office is the most dominant office productivity suite and while things have gotten much better in recent years, files made in Microsoft Office often don’t work well in OpenOffice.org. This can be a real problem when attempting to share office documents across the two platforms. An effort to make the two formats more compatible with one another will definitely be welcomed.
This isn’t the first time Microsoft has come to the table with a competitor in an effort to improve interoperability and the results of such endeavors have been mixed at best. Open source is gaining strong momentum in business computing and Microsoft would do well to not underestimate that momentum.
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