p2pnet.net News:- Wal-Mart Stores has struck a deal with Microsoft and Novell, “Microsoft’s preferred Linux partner,” as CNET News puts it, to build out the company’s Web operations.

“On Tuesday, Microsoft and Novell are expected to announce that Wal-Mart is the latest customer to purchase both Microsoft software and support certificates for Novell’s Suse Linux Enterprise Server,” says the story. “Wal-Mart, currently a Red Hat Linux customer, intends to use Windows Server and Suse Linux Enterprise Server in the expansion,” it has Wal-Mart seniorVP and cto Nancy Stewart, saying, and going on:

“That’s our direction. That’s where we’re going, but if we hit a roadblock and we can’t go forward, it’s up to Microsoft and Novell to figure out what to do about it.”

Microsoft wants to make Novell its preferred Linux provider, says CNET, continuing, “Microsoft offers coupons for Suse Enterprise Linux support services as well as legal indemnification for customers who use both Microsoft and Novell’s Linux, which is open-source.”

Questions over intellectual property are a “huge problem,” CNET quotes Stewart as saying. Wal-Mart now uses Linux in the data center of its current Web presence, “but had some trepidation with the idea of expanding it a much larger operation.

“To think about using it pervsively [sic], we were very concerned about it,” she said, states CNET. A larger Web operation would have “significantly higher legal exposure.”

But IP protections in the Novell deal give Wal-Mart more confidence in using Linux more broadly, says Stewart.

Slashdot it!

Also See:
CNET News – Wal-Mart eyes Microsoft for Web build-out, January 22, 2007

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