Dueling Interop Labs: Microsoft Opens One with Novell, Another with Sun
639866
Yesterday, Microsoft and Novell announced they were moving in together - at least insofar as their joint development work was concerned, into a modest 2,500 square-foot laboratory in Cambridge, Mass. "The first priority for the lab team will be to ensure interoperability between Microsoft and Novell virtualization technologies," reads yesterday's statement from Microsoft.
542847
Some are questioning the fit between the two companies from the perspective of open-source tools and APIs.
132295
Following through on one aspect of last year's collaboration deal, Microsoft and Novell today unveiled their new joint interoperability lab in Cambridge, Mass.
566627
Even as such open source software developers as Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) and OpenOffice.org wax enthusiastic concerning enterprise deployments of their respective Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Office alternatives, industry analysts are urging caution.
291817
Sun Microsystems and Microsoft, once bitter rivals, are growing ever closer through interoperability agreements that aim to make life easier for their respective customers.
520652
Will a nonprofit-driven browser tackle the behemoth from Redmond?
583590
The trials and tribulations of application dependency in a virtualized, hosted world.
621430
Or Celebrity Deathmatch? Comment Microsoft and Novell have recently announced a set of agreements to build, market, and support a series of new solutions to make their products work better together.â¦
157782
com December 27, 2004, 6:59 AM PT. Novell has begun a widely available trial of its Open Enterprise Server, software that combines tools from company&#39;s proprietary NetWare with the open-source SuSE Linux operating system.
661683
Is this the right book to introduce Microsoft power users to Linux?
123453
(InfoWorld) - Sun will start selling its lineup of 64-bit PC servers preinstalled with the Windows Server operating system from Microsoft within 90 days, the two companies said today. The two longtime rivals also said they will cooperate on technical development of Microsoft's server operating system on Sun Fire hardware as well as making Sun's Solaris Unix operating system fully manageable under Microsoft's recently introduced System Center Virtual Machine Manager software.                                                     "Management interoperability is part of our management strategy," said Andrew Lees, corporate vice president for the server and tools marketing and solutions group at Microsoft. The moves could help Sun boost sales of its servers, which have been hurting ever since the bursting of the dot-com bubble saw the rise of cheap PC servers running either Linux or Windows. "People who might not have in the past considered a Sun server for Windows will now consider it," said Michael Cherry, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft. Sun has been making aggressive partnership moves. IBM said last month that it would sell PC-based servers and blades using Solaris. For Microsoft, the tie-up could help the company compete in the hot virtualization market, where it is No. 2 to market leader VMware. Sun has long had its own virtualization technology, called Solaris Containers. Today's announcement, the companies said, is an expansion of an initial technical cooperation agreement signed in April 2004, during which Microsoft also paid Sun $1.6 billion to settle lingering antitrust and patent disputes. "What we have had has already produced good fruit, but we are looking forward to a significant expansion," Lees said. Sun will also build an interoperability center on Microsoft's campus in Redmond, Wash. The companies will also expand their Internet Protocol television partnership, which involves Microsoft's MediaRoom IPTV and multimedia platform and Sun's server and storage systems. Sun launched its Sun Fire servers two years ago as its first foray into the fast-growing PC server market. The servers run less-expensive but powerful AMD Opteron processors and start at prices of less than $1,000. The Sun Fire servers already support Windows Server, along with Red Hat Linux, Novell's Suse Enterprise Linux, VMware's ESX virtualization system, and Sun's own Solaris operating system, according to Lisa Sieker, vice president of marketing at Sun Systems. That allowed customers who had volume-license agreements with Microsoft to send their image DVDs to Sun and have the company preinstall Windows Server, Sieker said. But with this agreement, Sun will now officially be able to ship servers preinstalled with Windows Server to any customer or channel partner, she said. Windows Server will still be unable to run on Sun Fire servers using Sun's own Sparc64 chips, she said. Sun will continue to support and resell Red Hat and Suse Linux on its Sun Fire servers, she said. Future versions of those servers will also use Intel processors. Asked if Sun's latest alliance shows its intent to compete more directly with Linux and VMware, Sieker said, "We are responding to strong customer demand for this.... It's a complex marketplace out there." Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate
220103
Microsoft and Sun Microsystems say they are warming up to each other, but it will take more time to deliver on the grand promises of platform interoperability announced last spring.
593240
Novell this week spruced up a version of its Linux desktop aimed squarely at enterprise users.
38865
Blog: Novell takes a lot of heat for its patent deal with Microsoft, and rightfully so.  But there is much that the company is doing to advance the cause and state of open source in the industry.  In this second installment of the "Open Source @" Series, I talk
390943
Sun backs an EU standards push for interoperability between office software. Microsoft says it's already there.
67517
Blog: For the Linux consortium's top tech spot, it's out with Sun Microsystems' Ian Murdock and in with Novell's Markus Rex.
134604
Cementing a peculiar partnership among rivals, Microsoft and Novell are opening an eight-employee lab to make products interoperable.