Open Source Blog

Has Microsoft backed itself into a virtual corner?
September 13, 2007

Paula Rooney has written an excellent article about Microsoft attitude towards Linux in virtual environments, taking in its relationships with Novell and Citrix/XenSource, as well as its new partnership with Sun.

In her piece, Rooney makes a good point about the importance of Red Hat in all this. “Winning is not a foregone conclusion in the virtualization software market, and Microsoft should not be out alientating the market leading Linux distribution vendor," she writes.

It is a point that cannot be overstated. No matter how much of a boost Microsoft might have given Novell’s Linux revenue, the $21m it earned from Linux Platform Products in its latest quarter is dwarfed by Red Hat’s most recent RHEL subscription revenue of $103m.

While Microsoft would no doubt like to squeeze Red Hat out of the picture in favour of its preferred supplier, that is not going to happen anytime soon, and in the long run Microsoft simply cannot afford to ignore the Linux market leader.

As Rooney puts it: “Dissing Red Hat is silly. Such arrogance and competitive posturing is typical of Microsoft but it could backfire if it pushes its two key rivals — Red Hat and VMware – even closer together.”

It could also backfire if the company eventually has to back down and enter into a relationship with Red Hat that does not involve an intellectual property deal.

“The competitive standoff with Red Hat notwithstanding, Microsoft must realize by now that unless it extends the same level of compatibility to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and all other Linux distributions on its hypervisor that this gesture at interoperability is meaningless,” Rooney writes.

It’s a fair point. Has Microsoft cut off its nose to spite its face?