Het moet niet gekker worden: Microsoft heeft zojuist aangekondigd dat ze Novell Reseller worden. Tenminste dat is wat je concluderen uit het bericht in Wallstreet Journal. Maar er zit meer achter. Ze gaan samenwerken op R&D niveau op de volgende gebieden, zo lees ik in het persbericht van Microsoft:

“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.”

Externe link: transcript van de News Conference