Hewlett-Packard and international open source group SuSE
Linux are expanding their alliance that calls for HP to resell and support
SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8, powered by open source consortium
UnitedLinux, on HP’s ProLiant servers with Itanium-based servers.
The companies said the relationship would help provide customers a single
point of purchase, support and maintenance for SuSE Linux Enterprise Server
8, while at the same time making SuSE Linux a preferred vendor for HP.
The alliance means HP plans to resell, market and support the new SuSE
Linux Enterprise Server 8 on its HP ProLiant servers. The computer systems
vendor also plans to ship its ProLiant servers preloaded with Enterprise
Server 8, and plans to provide support for customers, along with support
organizations backed by SuSE engineering and product maintenance teams. In
addition, HP and SuSE said they would collaborate on extending the services
to Itanium 2-based HP server customers.
The HP/SuSE Linux agreement advances a five-year alliance between the two
companies, and is seen as a key growth enabler for Linux server
sales in Europe and other international markets.
The news comes on the heels of a ISV (independent software vendor)
partner program launched this week by UnitedLinux, the open source
consortium that includes SuSe Linux. The ISV program is aimed at helping
software vendors test and certify their applications on the UnitedLinux
platform, in yet another example of the spread of Linux support among major
and smaller software vendors to the enterprise.
Other UnitedLinux member companies are Conectiva, Turbolinux, and SCO
Group .
“This partnership between SuSE Linux and HP will advance the cause of
Linux servers running enterprise-class workloads,” said Jean S. Bozman,
research vice president, worldwide server group, IDC, as part of the
announcement.
“SuSE is the provider of one of the world’s top Linux distributions, and
HP is the server vendor that shipped the largest number of Linux server
units worldwide in 2002.”
In related news, SuSE Linux has also been tapped by supercomputing
specialist company Cray to drive key aspects of the
Department of Energy’s new massively parallel processing (MPP)
supercomputer.
The computer, called Red Storm, is deployed at Sandia National
Laboratories in New Mexico. The companies said it is expected to become
operational in the late 2004 timeframe and will use Advanced Micro Devices’
latest Opteron processors, which feature HyperTransport
high-bandwidth, low-latency internal switching architecture.
Cray said the Sandia National Laboratories Red Storm supercomputer is
slated to be used for computer simulations of the U.S. nuclear stockpile and
other applications.
