Microsoft's Linux deal is foray into China's cloud

The new interoperability and legal agreement with CS2C was inked Aug. 23 as part of a Linux server partnership deal. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, however Microsoft's announcement indicated that the goal is to "jointly develop, market and sell solutions for the booming cloud-computing market in China." CS2C sells Linux-based server and desktop operating system products in China.

The deal involves a technical collaboration on Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization research plus the signing of a "mutually beneficial customer covenant agreement." The covenant agreement sounds like the sort of indemnity program that Microsoft recently renewed with Attachmate's SUSE, where Microsoft promises not to sue Linux users for violating Microsoft's intellectual property as part of a licensing and interoperability deal for clients with mixed Windows Server and Linux Server environments.

The agreement with CS2C will include interoperability certification of the NeoKylin operating system running on Windows Server 2008 R2 using Hyper-V. To boot, System Center management packs will be created for the NeoKylin OS.

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