November 2006
“The City of Seattle’s IT staff supports a number of different operating environments, including Microsoft Windows®, Novell NetWare and several varieties of UNIX/Linux. All these environments require separate physical servers, and our data center is running out of space. This new Microsoft and Novell collaboration agreement could allow significant virtualization of servers, reducing the number of physical platforms we’d have to maintain. That, in turn, reduces costs for maintenance, electricity, cooling and space, saving taxpayer dollars, and helping improve stewardship of the environment. This helps to meet key goals set by Mayor Greg Nickels in his Climate Action Plan.”
-
Bill Schrier
Chief Technology Officer
City of Seattle
“This announcement validates both open source and proprietary software and is a tremendous development for the IT industry. By addressing open source IP issues and focusing on enabling greater interoperability between their open source and proprietary products, Novell and Microsoft have sent a strong signal to the industry — it’s about customers, collaboration and innovation. Let’s hope others follow their example.”
-
Catherine A. Allen
CEO
BITS Financial Services Roundtable
“In everything we do, we put our customers first. It is heartening to see longtime competitors like Microsoft and Novell do the same for the long-term benefit of the IT industry customers. Meaningful collaboration between leading software vendors that builds bridges between proprietary and open source software is necessary for the IT industry. We welcome these initiatives and hope to see others join in.”
-
Eric Wilson
Senior Vice President and CIO
Raley’s Family of Fine Stores
“This agreement is a positive example of how companies with different business models and approaches to intellectual property can work together. Hopefully this is a model that others in the industry will repeat. Intellectual property is a currency of exchange in the software marketplace, and today’s announcement is an important step in the continued progress of the IT industry as a whole.”
-
Eugene Roman
Group President, Systems and Technologies
Bell Canada
“Windows and Linux are extremely important to our enterprise customers and the industry, and AMD strongly supports both. This agreement by Novell and Microsoft helps customers bridge the gap between these platforms, giving them greater flexibility in doing what works best for them. This is a great example of vendors working together to resolve complexity so their customers don’t have to.”
-
Hector Ruiz
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Advanced Micro Devices – AMD
“This collaboration of open source and proprietary software is a win-win for the IT industry and our customers because it provides greater choice when developing comprehensive solutions. This alliance allows resellers to better address the specific needs of their end-user customers — even highly customized application needs. Congratulations to Microsoft and Novell for listening to customers, putting them first, and taking such a forward-looking approach.”
-
Jodi Honore
Vice President, Vendor Management
Ingram Micro North America
“Microsoft and Novell should be commended for putting customers and innovation before licensing ideology. This is the kind of achievement that can only be reached when parties respect one another’s innovations and intellectual property and put their customers first.
“This announcement is a victory for customers and the industry, including small software developers developing solutions for both Windows and Linux platforms. It’s further proof that free market forces are working and enable a vibrant software ecosystem that provides customer choice, innovation and competitive products.
“The reality is that customers are not interested in the best proprietary product or best open source product; they want the best product, period. With their pioneering approach, Microsoft and Novell are giving customers the choice they have demanded, leaving behind the philosophical licensing debates around open source and proprietary software.”
-
Jonathan Zuck
President
Association for Competitive Technologies
“We are pleased to see that Novell and Microsoft have come together to address customer needs with heterogeneous operating environments. As an industry leader in the IT market, we are excited to see the technology investments being made around virtualization and interoperability by both companies with this agreement.”
-
Kevin Kettler
CTO
Dell Inc.
“One of the results of the rapid growth of open source software is a world of ‘mixed code,’ IT environments composed of both commercial and open source software. At Palamida, we are dedicated to assisting our customers with the new intellectual property (IP) compliance, licensing and software asset management issues that result. From our perspective, today’s announcement from Microsoft and Novell is an important advance in interoperability in this mixed code world — interoperability not only with respect to technical issues, but also to IP issues. This is a major win for customers who will now receive a whole new level of support and assurance in their deployment of mixed-code IT environments.”
-
Mark Tolliver
CEO
Palamida Inc.
“I’m encouraged by Microsoft and Novell’s announcement. Microsoft has made positive changes to its operating systems, and this announcement ensures better compatibility and interoperability with some Linux systems.”
-
Sen. Orrin Hatch, (R-Utah)
“We applaud Novell and Microsoft in their efforts to provide greater Windows and Linux interoperability. Customers want solutions that meet their individual needs, and higher levels of software interoperability give them the ability to more easily make the best choices.”
-
Paul Otellini
President and Chief Executive Officer
Intel Corporation
“SAP has been the first enterprise application vendor to run our apps on Linux, while we have more Windows-based deployments than any other platform. Today’s announcement means that customers can now choose their preferred operating system for each part of their SAP implementation with the confidence that the systems will have strong interoperability and be supported by SAP, Novell and Microsoft — both companies being strong SAP partners.”
-
Shai Agassi
President of Product and Technology
SAP
“This technology and business collaboration provides a model that allows Microsoft and Novell to develop new solutions to enable open source and proprietary software to work better together in a mixed-source environment. We applaud these two companies for doing the hard work to build a bridge between Windows and Linux”
-
Shane Robison
Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy and Technology Officer
Hewlett Packard – HP
“IBM encourages more industry endorsement of mixed-source solutions that promote open standards. Microsoft support for interoperability with the industry-standard OpenDocument Format is most welcome. Open documents give customers choice and help unlock broad industry creativity, allowing access to a new generation of innovative applications. Our view continues to be that interoperability and choice are key values that customers demand and deserve.”
-
Steve Mills
Senior Vice President and Group Executive
IBM Software
“One of the key challenges in government is IT interoperability. We commend Microsoft and Novell for their collaboration and their efforts to build bridges in the interoperability area, which will help government to better serve our customers, our business community and our citizens.”
-
Thomas Jarrett
Secretary of the Department of Technology and CIO
State of Delaware
