The IBM-Novell arrangement did not, like the Red Hat deal, involve any money exchanging hands between the two, says Roy Aho, director for technical services and support for ISV and developer relations at IBM. Novell’s SUSE Linux will be installed on x86, mainframe, and Power servers at nine centers spread around North America, Europe, and Asia.
IBM has over 25 big innovation centers around the world, plus a number of smaller satellite offices within different regions, all designed to allow ISV partners to come in and port their code to IBM hardware running different operating system platforms. IBM and Novell will be rolling out SUSE Linux Enterprise Server at centers in: San Mateo, California; Waltham, Massachusetts; Chicago, Illinois; Hursley, UK; Paris, France; Stuttgart, Germany; Bangalore, India; Shanghai, China; and Sydney, Australia.
The SUSE products can be installed on any and all of IBM’s eServer platforms. Partners also get help from IBM and Novell Linux and server experts as they do their application ports, and Novell is offering its Linux certification process through the centers. ISVs also get their own copies of SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 to play with as part of the deal, which is worth a few grand.
