HSBC Follows Wal-Mart in Microsoft-Novell Deal

Published: March 27, 2007

by Alex Woodie

HSBC, one of the world's largest banks, is taking Microsoft and Novell up on their offer to streamline the integration of Linux and Windows, and to standardize its Linux environment on the SuSE Linux distribution, the companies announced last week.

In November, Microsoft and Novell unveiled a partnership whereby Microsoft promised not to sue Novell's SuSE Linux customers for patent violations, and the two companies would work together to ensure their Windows and Linux products worked well in a virtualized environment. As part of the deal, Microsoft purchased 70,000 "coupons" for SLES from Novell that it would in turn resell to its Windows customers who are looking for Linux products.

According to Microsoft, it has already sold more than 40,000 of those coupons for three-year SLES support agreements from Novell to companies such as AIG Technologies, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, and Wal-Mart. Now you can add HSBC, a $76 billion bank with more than 300,000 employees in 82 countries, to that list.

Matthew O'Neill, group head of distributed systems for HSBC's global IT operations unit, said the Microsoft-Novell agreement provided that catalyst to help HSBC reduce the cost and complexity of its Linux environment and continues to standardize on Microsoft Active Directory. "Our decision to simplify our mixed-source environment with Microsoft and Novell will allow us to reduce the cost and complexity. That's why we have selected Novell as our preferred Linux partner to support our Linux infrastructure going forward," he says.

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