Microsoft wants to Hold its Tail up

Sometimes the cancer can be the cure. Unbelievable, but that’s the latest finding by the software giant we all know as Microsoft. Nothing could deter them from their idea of not going beyond proprietary products, but all of a sudden they seem to have realized that the grass is indeed greener on the other side. After Oracle’s announcement, its Microsoft’s turn to do something that gives Linux the best glamor shot it has ever had.

The deal that was announced two weeks ago shook the world, two arch enemies who would not miss any chance to slay the other getting together. It seemed the sun had come up from the other side that day. Microsoft and Novell decided that they will together take networking beyond what it has been and signed a deal till 2012, whereby they intend to build, market and support a series of new solutions that will make their existing products more compatible. The development work will include virtualization of Windows on SUSE Linux and vice versa. For the users it was a dream come true.

Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft said that Microsoft is not jumping in to wholesale Linux. The person who termed open source as a cancer sometime back, was just the opposite, this time and said, Linux is relevant and can’t be ignored. The open source camp was pleasantly surprised by the sudden politeness.

The deal will enable Novell’s SUSE Linux platform to work seamlessly with Microsoft’s Windows environment. That is a big jump for Linux and the icing on the cake is that the major share of the financial cake also goes Novell’s way. They really could not have asked for something better. Microsoft will sell a minimum of 70,000 SUSE Linux certificates per annum and hence Novell hopes to earn about $240 m that way over the next five years. This way $108m come to Novell’s side and they generate about $40m for Microsoft. Roger Levy, vice-president of open platform solutions said “We get the lion’s share in order to look at who has what strength, revenues and patents out of the agreement.”

Enterprises with heterogeneous IT environments are the ones who will have the maximum benefit as they will not get sued by either Microsoft or Novell if they create a Novell Enterprise network over a Windows OS and vice versa. This was quite a major problem earlier and both companies were fixing notices at companies doing something of this sort. This was also a resolution from the deal. Though it does not mean that the companies cannot sue each other over different reasons. Only the customers have been spared and really they couldn’t be less concerned what Novell and Microsoft end up doing to each other. Their bug has been patched and they are more than happy and their dilemma of buying with various restrictions are out of the way too.

Experts are putting forward their own opinions whether all these deals will be good for Linux in the long run or not. The discussion remains inconclusive as of now and only time will be the one to tell us who will have the last laugh.

One cannot put aside the fact that Microsoft would not have imagined sometime back that they will sign this kind of deal due to which Linux will get a big boost and now despite facing a tongue in cheek situation Ballmer still says, “if you want something, I’m still going to tell you, ‘Windows, Windows, Windows.’” Microsoft really wants to hold up its tail no matter what.