Novell and RedHat have joined IBMs strategic alliance,
their highest tier partner status. IBM
have said that the strengthened alliance will allow users to obtain standards
based Linux hardware, software and service through integrated channels. Customers will be able to purchase one and
three year Linux support subscriptions for the Linux operating system on both
IBM and non-IBM hardware. Suse Linux
Enterprise Server will certify IBMs version of Apache Geronimoan open source
J2EE application server Websphere Community Edition.