Microsoft and Novell celebrate one year of marriage

Industry giants Microsoft and Novell this week celebrated the one year anniversary of their commitment to work together to ensure interoperability between proprietary and open source software.

Since the landmark agreement, which saw the former rivals make peace, the two companies have expanded the scope of their collaboration and signed up a multitude of customers spanning a variety of sectors.

In addition to setting out to try and give businesses greater peace of mind when it comes to intellectual property (IP), Microsoft and Novell said they are expanding their technical partnership. Specifically, they're linking their respective frameworks to develop assistive technologies that can make computers more accessible to people with disabilities.

"As we mark the one-year anniversary of our relationship, we are very pleased with the customer support we have received for a solution that provides cross-platform interoperability," said Bob Muglia, senior vice president of Microsoft's server and tools business group. "Moreover, the Novell and Microsoft relationship has opened doors to more cross-platform collaboration in areas such as accessibility, which are of great importance to customers worldwide. We are eager to work with Novell to address this important issue and help a wider population of people with disabilities work with computers."

With regards to helping those with disabilities benefit from the fruits of the digital world, the collaboration is specifically focused on providing technological aids for the blind, according to Microsoft and Novell.

Microsoft says it will make available its user interface automation (UIA) specification, without asserting any Microsoft patents necessary to implement the specification against anyone, regardless of platform, while Novell will ensure the UIA framework interoperate with the Linux Accessibility Toolkit (ATK).

"The NFB challenges the entire IT industry to continue to look for creative opportunities such as this to solve longstanding interoperability challenges and reduce development barriers to accessibility," said Dr. Marc Maurer, president of the National Federation of the Blind (NFB).

Building on the number of customers on board thus far, the two companies choose the anniversary celebration to announce a further 30 new sign-ups. These new customers, who will benefit from Microsoft certificates for three-year priority support subscriptions for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell, include Leicester City Council, Southwest Airlines and the City of Los Angeles.

"This agreement has been about the customer since day one," said Jeff Jaffe, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Novell. "Customers told us they wanted Linux and Windows to work better together so they could focus on their businesses. By taking a leading position in delivering interoperability with Microsoft, Novell is becoming the preferred Linux choice for the integrated enterprise, a fact borne out by the significant sales increase we've seen over the past year."

In addition to the focus on ensuring technology is more accessible, the two companies said that plan to continue working on solutions in the areas of standards-based management, directory and identity federation, and document format compatibility.

Engineers are also focusing hard on virtualsation and working in the Microsoft and Novell interoperability lab in Cambridge, Massachusettsto run automated tests to ensure SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 is interoperable with Windows Server virtualisation and Windows Server 2008 with Xen.

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