In what came as a surprise to many Linux observers, Red Hat announced on the morning of February 16th that it has signed reciprocal agreements with Microsoft to enable increased interoperability for the companies’ virtualization platforms.
While Red Hat, after Novell partnered with Microsoft, had talked with Microsoft in 2007 about partnering, those talks came to nothing since Red Hat would not have anything to do with Microsoft’s various IP (intellectual property) claims.
Things have changed. Red Hat announced that each company will join the other’s virtualization validation/certification program and will provide coordinated technical support for their mutual server virtualization customers. The object according to Red Hat’s press statement is: “The reciprocal validations will allow customers to deploy heterogeneous, virtualized Red Hat and Microsoft solutions with confidence.”