Three Takers Named for Microsoft's Linux Support

narramissic writes "According to an article on ITworld, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank AG, and AIG Technologies have signed on for Microsoft's technical support for Novell Inc.'s Suse Enterprise Linux. This follows last month's announcement of a deal between Novell and Microsoft that Steve Ballmer described as an effort to 'bridge the divide between open-source and proprietary-source software.' None of the companies cited the price of the support certificates, nor would they say how many they were activating. Even more interesting, Credit Suisse is a brand new cusomter for Novell."

Let the blind Microsoft bashing begin

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not Microsoft's fault if these companies choose to pay for support they don't actually need.

"Support"

[porkThreeWays]

The word "support" is so overused. What exactly does support mean these days anyway? Patches that don't work? Phone calls to someone out of the country that doesn't speak your language natively and has never actually used the program in a production environment? Hold times of 45 minutes? Security updates that break other parts?

Honestly, the word "support" to me has almost no meaning anymore. It's been thrown out there so many times as the deciding factor in a purchase, however I've yet to see really useful support. I've dealt with companies big and small and have never resolved a difficult issue in less than an hour with their supplied support.

All I care about anymore is whether they give you the proper tools to solve the problem yourself. Proper documentation and the source code (yes, smaller companies will give you source code if you are big enough and that's the deal breaker). I'll take that over a level I phone jockey any day!

Re:Why? - Credit Suisse in particular

[h4rm0ny]

You're not missing anything based on the evidence available to us. The conclusion is that there's something behind the scenes. It makes me wonder what sort of deals are being made between Microsoft and the directors at Novell.

Re:And so it begins.

[peragrin]

Deutsche Bank AG I believe is one of the people who said SCO's stock price would go to $45 a share.

there would of been no arm twisting there.

Re:Blind MS bashing?! Are you kidding?!

[nadamsieee]

I, for one, am getting pretty tired of people whining that Microsoft gets unfairly bashed here on Slashdot too often. I regularly read plenty of responses that defend Microsoft that get modded +5 Insightful.

Its called astroturfing [wikipedia.org]. The truth hurts, but that doesn't mean that the MS fanboys and the MS marketing department are going to take it laying down...

Re:Why? - Credit Suisse in particular

[MadMorf]

We have a big Credit Suisse data center based locally and they have been using Novell products all along...

Wonder where they got their information?

Why?

[NineNine]

Why would they? Why would they want two different support deals, each one supporting just their own products, or potentially, one support deal, to support their whole system, and the integration. I think that's a no-brainer. Heck, I don't know why anybody would pay for Novell support at this point.

Re:"Support"

[McDutchie]

The word "support" is so overused. What exactly does support mean these days anyway? Patches that don't work? Phone calls to someone out of the country that doesn't speak your language natively and has never actually used the program in a production environment? Hold times of 45 minutes? Security updates that break other parts?

None of that. It means "paid scapegoat", i.e. job security for IT professionals who, instead of getting fired for the inevitable IT problems, can shift the blame for those onto the company providing the "support".

How hard would it be

[Anonymous Coward]

for Microsoft to make Windows more compatible with Linux? Not very. Support _standard_ LDAP and webdav + NFS and remote X display and you'd be mostly there. Instead, Microsoft broke compatibility with most of these protocols/standards or ignored them. Seems ironic now that they are talking about interoperability.