Microsoft, Novell reached a historic agreement

Yesterday, a historic agreement was signed between the two firms that were competitors of each other - Microsoft and Novell.

Under this agreement, Microsoft and Novell will work together to develop a number of technologies to enable the open source Suse Linux operating system to be better compatible with Windows. This means that users who come here can easily use Windows and Suse Linux on the same system.

Besides, Microsoft is also committed to not claiming rights to any technology that Novell can use in the Suse Linux operating system.

' Today's agreement between Microsoft and Novell will help bridge the gap between open source software and commercial software ,' said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

Microsoft and Novell will also set up joint research labs to develop and test new products, collaborate with customers and the open source community. The main cooperation goal between the two companies in the coming time will be virtualization technology to allow Linux and Windows to run on the same system, web server service application management and create better compatibility between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and CEO Novell Ronald Hovsepian at the announcement of the agreement.

Microsoft and Novell refused to disclose the financial terms of the agreement. However, this information will soon be revealed because it has a direct impact on Novell's revenue, John Dragoon - Novell's CEO - confirmed.

Today's Microsoft and Novell agreement will help bridge the gap between open source software and commercial software.

The agreement with Novell is the second collaboration with an open source software vendor this week by Microsoft. This can be seen as a new strategy of Microsoft to ensure better technology compatibility between Microsoft products and open source products as the number of Linux users is increasing rapidly, especially in the market. server.

Two days ago Microsoft also signed a long-term cooperation agreement with open source software firm Zend.

' We greatly appreciate the role of open source software in the information technology industry today ,' said Brad Smith, head of Microsoft's lawyers' team. ' Today's cooperation agreement will take the cooperation between commercial software and open source software to a new level '.

Meanwhile, a partnership agreement with Microsoft will give Novell an advantage over its direct competitor Red Hat.

We shook hands with each other to work together towards the goal because of giving our customers more choices. ' Linux has a very strong development ,' said Katherine Egbert, an analyst with Jefferies & Co, specializing in ' Red Hat and Novell ' - reviews. ' Therefore, many large software firms in the world are moving towards supporting open source instead of direct competition like before .'

Gartner statistics show that in 2005, up to 21% of the worldwide servers run Linux operating systems and 67% of them run Windows. Linux has consistently gained significant market share in the global server market over the years.

Hoang Dung