The deal will see over 3,000 Swiss Federal Government servers moved to Waltham, Massachusetts-based Novell’s SUSE Linux operating system and backs up the claim made by its president for EMEA, Thomas Francese, that Novell is seeing a renaissance in interest.
Linux is already used in a number of Swiss government departments, according to Jurg Rosemer, Swiss Federal Government delegate for information strategy, but the deal with Novell is the result of the country’s first formal procurement process for Linux at a federal level.
Novell last month announced a $39m contract with the UK’s National Health Service that enabled it to grow revenue in its fourth quarter, leading Francese to boast of a rebirth for the company, which has been through a difficult transition period following its acquisition of SUSE Linux and Ximian.
The fourth quarter also saw SUSE Linux Enterprise Server subscriptions total 65,000, a significant improvement on 28,000 in the third quarter and 21,000 in the same quarter a year ago.
