Numerous Customers Worldwide Realize Benefits of Microsoft-Novell Agreement

Microsoft Corp. and Novell Inc. today announced that 12 new customers have signed up to take advantage of the companies’ collaboration. These customers, from around the globe, are 1blu, Arsys, Fujitsu Services Oy, Gordon Food Service, Gulfstream Aerospace Corp., hi5 Networks Inc., Host Europe, Nationwide, PRISACOM SA, Reed Elsevier, Save Mart Supermarkets, and state of California, Department of Fish and Game.

"This impressive list of customers across a wide range of industry groups and geographies is a further proof point of the value of interoperability," said Susan Heystee, vice president and general manager of global strategic alliances for Novell. "Customers are looking for their vendors to solve their interoperability challenges. This is resulting in continued growth in the share of SUSE® Linux Enterprise* in the Linux market."

"Customers have asked us for greater interoperability and for IP assurance that enables vendors to build technical bridges," said Susan Hauser, general manager of strategic partnerships and licensing at Microsoft. "By responding to what customers want, we’ve seen overwhelming support. We have customers of all sizes from around the world signing up to take advantage of the benefits we’re offering."

Each of these companies has expressed enthusiasm for the interoperability between Microsoft® Windows® and SUSE Linux Enterprise, along with the cost savings and intellectual property assurances that other customers have already begun to experience through this agreement. Microsoft will deliver SUSE Linux Enterprise Server subscription certificates to each company, under separate customer agreements.

The following are statements from each of the companies’ respective spokespersons, emphasizing the reasons for employing the benefits of the Microsoft and Novell agreement:

• "We embrace the cooperation between Microsoft and Novell because it offers us, and our customers, the most benefits in interoperability and IP assurance," said Johann Dasch, managing director of 1blu. "As a Web-hosting company, this gives us the opportunity to develop the new leading-edge, feature-rich products our customers demand."
• "We are glad to have companies like Novell and Microsoft that consider our demands. By incorporating a mixed-source environment of Microsoft and Novell, we’ll reap the benefits of better cost savings and interoperability," said Manuel Amutio, CIO of Arsys. "These benefits will allow us to keep our products in the more advanced position and to keep on being in one of the main positions in Europe in the hosting market"
• "SUSE Enterprise Linux is a great addition to our operating system offering that we offer to our Patja outsourcing customers," said Taija Engman, director, Solutions Group, Fujitsu Services, Finland. "The service solution’s many features include interoperability technical options across platforms that make it attractive to small and medium-sized, as well as large, organizations."
• "Part of our business goal is to help our customers operate efficiently and build their own bottom line. Employing a mixed-source environment of Microsoft and Novell makes the most sense for us because it helps us manage the IP issues and allows us to focus on our core business. This is the kind of customer service we expect from our software vendors," said Kevin Toren, chief information officer at Gordon Food Service.
• "With more than 60 million registered members worldwide, we wanted to work with vendors who can enable us to deliver a reliable service that could scale," said Akash Garg, chief technology officer of hi5 Networks. "Microsoft and Novell offered us a solution that could do exactly that, giving us a platform to help us grow our business."
• "As a result of the relationship between Microsoft and Novell, Host Europe is migrating from self-supported Linux to standardize on SUSE Linux Enterprise and Windows," said Uwe Braun, managing director of Host Europe. "We will leverage this arrangement to provide both operating system platforms to our customers at a common pricing level to give customers the freedom to choose the platform which best fits their needs. The focus on interoperability is a great benefit to customers like Host Europe as we drive down operational costs."
• "Microsoft and Novell’s commitment to work together to deliver interoperability between their offerings will enable us to continue to offer world-class applied information technology solutions to our customers," said Terry Goodwin, vice president of Data Center & Network Services at Reed Elsevier. "We expect collaborations such as this one to continue to bring precision performance and rapid implementation to the markets we serve."
• "At Nationwide, it is important to us that our software is compliant with all IP licensing requirements. In addition, employing both Windows and Linux in our company always seemed the right thing to do, but making the systems work together sometimes requires a significant amount of time and resources," said David Zelle, director of Systems Engineering & Administration at Nationwide. "Engaging in this pilot program is giving us a lot more flexibility and helping to make our company more competitive; we are actively looking to migrate to SUSE Linux Enterprise versus other brands of Linux."
• "The virtualization and the interoperability capabilities between Windows and SUSE Linux Enterprise, in addition to the ability to employ a certified Linux distribution for software and hardware platforms, will help our mixed-IT environment operate seamlessly, reducing operational costs," said Jorge Oteo, assistant IT director of PRISACOM.
• "By standardizing our distributed systems architecture with Windows and SUSE Linux we now have more flexibility and control over our more than 250 distributed data centers," said James Sims, CIO for Save Mart Supermarkets. "Standardizing on these platforms is helping us streamline our overall infrastructure and reduce costs so we can focus on finding practical and innovative ways to serve our customers."

The Microsoft-Novell Agreement

On Nov. 2, 2006, Novell and Microsoft announced a series of agreements to jointly build, market and support new solutions to improve interoperability, deliver powerful new virtualization capabilities, make Microsoft and Novell products work better together, and give customers peace of mind that both companies stand behind the products they deliver. More information about the Microsoft and Novell agreement, including other customer announcements, can be found at http://www.moreinterop.com.