Wal-Mart has signed a deal with Microsoft for the supply
of Suse Linux Enterprise Server software from Novell.
The deal will allow Wal-Mart to extend its mixed server environment
and enable its existing Microsoft software to work better with
Novell’s
open-source platforms.
Wal-Mart aims to move to lower-cost commodity server hardware as
a result of the deal.
The deal follows an agreement signed between Microsoft and
Novell in November 2006, which seemingly put an end to the war the
two companies had been fighting over competing server operating
systems.
Nancy Stewart, senior vice-president and chief technology
officer of Wal-Mart, said, “We have wanted information technology
vendors to deliver true interoperability and intellectual property
assurance between multiple platforms for some time now, and we are
pleased that Microsoft and Novell are committed to fulfilling that
need.”
Wal-Mart will manage its mixed server environment using
Microsoft’s Systems Management Server, Active Directory and
Microsoft Operations Manager management platforms.
The two suppliers said that since their November peace deal,
more than 35,000 new certificates for three-year priority support
subscriptions to Suse Linux Enterprise Server have been activated
under the collaboration.
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