What are the specifics of the agreement?
Like many commercial transactions, the financial terms of the agreement are not being disclosed at this time. Under the technical collaboration agreement, the companies will create a joint research facility and pursue new software solutions for virtualization, management, and document format compatibility. These are potentially huge markets — IDC projects the overall market for virtual machine software to be $1.8 billion by 2010, and the overall market for distributed system management software to be $10.2 billion by 2010 — and the companies believe their investment in interoperability will make their respective products more attractive to customers. Under the business collaboration agreement, the companies will pursue a variety of joint marketing activities. In addition, Microsoft will distribute as part of a resale arrangement approximately 70,000 coupons for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server maintenance and support per year so that customers can benefit from the use of the new software s
