Microsoft Joins Hands With Novell
My 2 cents ... This is
indeed a very strategic move. On the outset, it may seem odd. But indeed there
are many aspects that make this deal a wonderful one.
Novell supports Mono. Many companies are using Mono. Many companies are going live with products on Mono. Mono is also has a roadmap for WPF, WCF release in near future. Watch out for Olive. Development is happening almost in same pace as .Net releases with a acceptable delay. Microsoft can also help Mono to have better compatibility with Microsoft OS.
Novell has good Server market presence almost like windows
which has good Desktop market presence. Interoperability between
Windows and SUSE Enterprise Linux Server (SLES) on virtualization,
Microsoft's Active Directory and Novell's eDirectory,
and Microsoft Office and OpenOffice XML formats
on the desktop would be the best outcome of this collaboration.
It makes perfect sense for Microsoft to go ahead with
Novell than any other linux vendor because, Novell is not bound to Linux and has products
both on Windows and Microsoft. Novell on the other hand gets legal status
for SuSe Linux. Linux could violate 283 patents!
More Microsoft products can be ported to Linux, like SQL server, Sharepoint, Exchange Server, etc for Linux
servers!
Microsoft Open Specification Promise can help people develop better interoperable webservices for cross platform products to work seamlessly. A good consolidation move to allow new market of mixed source products. Host a ASP.Net app on linux, run a .Net windows application on Linux. That opens up a plethora of opportunities.
And... soon we can expect .Net 4.0/VS.Net 2008 to be released over Windows and Suse Linux on
same day:)
Indeed a nice move, and it would be interesting to watch new wave
of services and products on both platforms.
Read the complete post at http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/sprout/archive/2006/11/03/153376.aspx