Add SuSE to the list of operating systems going to be offered by Dell as they ally with Novell and Microsoft to sell their server software.
Planning on selling both SuSE SLES (SuSE Linux Enterprise Server) and Microsoft's Windows Server, Dell broadens their offering of solutions, hoping to increase their market as a PC manufacturer and reseller and specially marketing the Novel server software. Another result of this deal is that Microsoft has agreed to stop pursuing Novel for their alleged "patent infringements".
Microsoft comes into the whole play as they are developing virtualization solutions, which will allow one to run SuSE on Windows systems, and Windows on SuSE systems. Rick Becker, vice president of solutions in the Dell Product Group, said that custoemrs "like being able to deploy both Windows and Linux and know that they can interoperate and run their data center better, and they like knowing that they can do so safely, and with (intellectual property) assurance."
This comes after the recent announcement that Dell would begin offering Ubuntu as an alternative to the Windows systems that it had sold in the past. The Red Hat relationships between them and Dell have not been damaged, however; Microsoft claims that they would have made the same deal with Red Hat, had they been willing.
In any case, it's highly unlikely that having Microsoft at Novell's back will have much of an impact on the sales of the SuSE servers that Dell is going to offer. More importantly is how the marketing is done, at it appears as if that will be left up to Dell.
This should be interesting to see how the sales of these new server systems turn out, which we should say it quite probably to suceed, especially since Microsoft's on their side.
It is in Microsoft's interests for Apple and Linux to do well (or, well enough), lest the peasants revolt again and talk of "breaking up the monopoly" return. Remember a few years ago how Microsoft bailed Apple out?
