These once fierce competitors have announced details of their partnership that was announced late last year. Considering some of the public "discussions" of what the partnership meant to those who ran Linux, I’m impressed that they kept the train on the tracks because this deal will offer some benefits for those running products from both of these companies.
Virtualisation
- Novell’s Suse Linux Enterprise 10 will be a supproted guest on Windows Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 2 (out in Q2). We can read from this that there will be support on the "Longhorn" Hypervisor product, due out 6 months after "Longhorn" is released.
- Speakign of which, Suse Linux Enterprise 10 will be supported as an "enlightened guest" on "Longhorn" Hypervisor.
- Support for "Longhorn" on Suse Linux using Xen’s (another Microsoft partner) virtualisation solution.
There’s a comment in the press release that "Longhorn" is due out in H2 of 2007. It’s either going to be very late 2007 or early 2008. MS will not rush it out just to meet deadlines … they will want to get this right like they did with Windows 2003.
Web Based Management
The two companies are workign together on WS-Management solutions to manage Windows Server, Suse Linux and virtualisation. Both Novell Zenworks Orchestrator and Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 will feature WS-Management support.
Directory and ID Interoperability
Both companies have their own directories, Active Directory and Novell’s eDirectory. Both will work closely with each other to increase interoperability in heterogeneous environments.
Document Interoperability
Micosoft has already announced the release (via SourceForge.net) of the Open XML/ODF Translator for Microsoft Word 2007, Word 2003 and Word XP. Novell will release an Open XML/ODF Translator for the Novell edition of OpenOffice.org.