Microsoft kicks SUSE another $100m
The SUSE division of Attachmate has managed to talk Microsoft into shelling out another chunk of change – $100m – to help prop up SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, the Linux distro formerly controlled by Novell, and to help drive Red Hat's rival distro from Windows shops.
This is the third reseller agreement that Microsoft has inked with the owner of SUSE Linux, which is the number two commercial Linux and considerably behind rival Red Hat in terms of revenues and support customers. Number two has to try harder, and it often needs the help of a behemoth such as Microsoft, which wants to be able to demonstrate alternatives to itself in the market but also to have control over those alternatives.
Hence the original $240m deal to redistribute 70,000 SLES licenses in Windows shops, which Microsoft and Novell signed back in November 2006. That deal also included provisions to work on interoperability between Windows and SUSE Linux and their respective server virtualization hypervisors, Hyper-V and Xen. Read more...