BMW and Siemens welcome interoperability benefits of Microsoft-Novell agreement

-- Manufacturing Business Technology, 9/12/2007 9:21:00 AM

BMW AG and Siemens Corp. are among the latest customers to take advantage of the collaboration between Microsoft Corp. and Novell that enables IT interoperability in mixed-source environments.
Under two separate agreements, Microsoft will deliver to BMW and Siemens each certificates for three-year priority support subscriptions to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell, thereby helping the companies run both Microsoft Windows and SUSE Linux enterprise systems seamlessly together.
BMW and Siemens join a host of European companies, including Credit Suisse and HSBC that are benefiting from Novell and Microsoft's agreement to jointly build and support solutions to improve interoperability, deliver powerful new virtualization capabilities, and provide intellectual property (IP) peace of mind.
"Interoperability remains one of the top challenges for our customers, and through our current alliance with Microsoft we are providing solutions to meet this challenge," says Susan Heystee, VP and general manager of global strategic alliances for Novell. "These two companies—BMW and Siemens—have dramatically different businesses, yet the same technology platform can be leveraged to increase their efficiencies internally, and for us that equates to continued growth of SUSE Linux Enterprise in the market."
For Siemens, the agreement will support the Siemens operating company through the work of the ISEC subsidiary of Siemens Enterprise Communications, which is responsible for customer software application development and management worldwide. Due to the large quantity of current and legacy Linux* applications in customer environments, Siemens has significant need for Windows and Linux platform compatibility.
"Siemens customers operate in a heterogeneous environment, and our ability to harness the interoperability work between Novell and Microsoft brings immense value to our business," says Dr. Manfred Wangler, VP of corporate research and technology, Siemens. "Agreements like this allow us to focus on innovating, working with partners to improve processes and efficiencies by providing the framework for collaboration."
The agreement will enable BMW's dual-vendor datacenter strategy, supporting worldwide corporate computing services and many human resources, marketing and financial applications. BMW now has the potential to pursue systems management in a more efficient and reliable manner, more securely ramp up its future virtualization activities, and have IP peace of mind.