In a renewal of a deal originally brokered with Novell prior to its acquisition by Attachmate, Microsoft has committed to invest US$100m in new SUSE Linux Enterprise certificates for customers receiving Linux support from SUSE over the next four years.
As IT operating environments become increasingly consumerised, cloud-based and automated, there is an implicit expectation that the underlying technologies from multiple vendors should work together. For this reason, the collaborative relationship between Microsoft and SUSE has come to be viewed as a model for the industry.
The joint Microsoft-SUSE collaboration has served more than 725 customers worldwide across a range of industries, such as manufacturing, oil and gas, healthcare, and financial services.
Recent additions include Aeropuertos Españoles y Navegación Aérea, ALSTOM IT Shared Service Centres, Celesio AG, Colt Technology Services Group Ltd., Coop Danmark A/S, FagorBrandt SAS, LIBRO Handelsgesellschaft mbH,Nationale Suisse, Swiss Re and Wincor Nixdorf International GmbH.
In addition, through this alliance, SUSE enables customers to consolidate their Linux support by offering subscription support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and community Linux distributions such as CentOS.
Microsoft/SUSE cloud collaboration
Microsoft and SUSE have also worked together to build a bridge for customers between the two worlds of open source and proprietary software. As this collaboration moves forward, the two companies will continue to offer the highest levels of interoperability and assurance that both companies stand behind their solutions.
“Our collaboration with SUSE not only helps customers to achieve success today, but also seeks to provide them with a solid foundation for tomorrow,” said Sandy Gupta, general manager of the Open Solutions Group at Microsoft.
“Through our continued engagement on the technical side, an outstanding support offering from SUSE and our ability to provide mutual IP assurance, we feel confident that we will be able to deliver core value to those running mixed-source IT environments well into the future – and into the cloud.”
