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Microsoft and Novell continue partnership

Microsoft Corp. and Novell today unveiled more details about their joint technical roadmap.

The two firms are engaged in joint development on four areas of technology that address problems faced by enterprise customers: virtualization, Web services for managing physical and virtual servers, directory and identity interoperability, and document format compatibility.

Microsoft and Novell are jointly developing a virtualization offering for Linux and Windows Server to consolidate server workloads in heterogeneous data centres. The virtualization collaboration agreement between Novell and Microsoft will result in technology designed to allow customers to do the following:

Host SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 from Novell as a virtualized guest on an upcoming service pack of Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 service pack 1.

Host SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 as an enlightened guest on the next version of Microsoft Windows Server, code-named “Longhorn,” using the Windows Server virtualization technology.

Host Windows Server “Longhorn” as a paravirtualized guest on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, using the Xen virtualization technology embedded in the Linux operating system.

These components of the virtualization collaboration will be released throughout 2007.