News

Microsoft Enters Open Source Cloud Deal with China Standard Software

• By Kurt Mackie
• August 23, 2011

Microsoft signed an interoperability and legal agreement on Tuesday with China Standard Software Co. Ltd. (CS2C) as part of a Linux server partnership deal. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The deal's aim, according to Microsoft's announcement, is to "jointly develop, market and sell solutions for the booming cloud-computing market in China," where CS2C sells Linux-based server and desktop OS products. Microsoft's partnership with the company is associated with CS2C's NeoKylin Linux Server.

The deal involves a technical collaboration on Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization technology 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 customers with mixed Windows Server and Linux Server environments.

However, an attempt to clarify that detail by veteran Microsoft watcher Mary-Jo Foley received no response from Microsoft, which described that part of the deal as "confidential." Foley's article did confirm that this deal, which is described as a "Hyper-V Open Cloud" agreement, is part of the Microsoft Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track partner program. Under that program, partners build "certified" private clouds using Microsoft-stack technologies and their own technologies. Microsoft's current partners on that program include Dell, Fujitsu, Hitachi, HP, IBM, NEC, and NetApp with Cisco.

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

It's unclear exactly what software will be used as CS2C sells cloud products in China under this deal. According to descriptions of the Microsoft Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track program, the software stack used can vary. Microsoft's reference architecture whitepaper for the program is fairly general, except that Hyper-V is included.

Some other software that may be prescribed by Microsoft under the Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track program are Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager and Operations Manager, as well as Microsoft SQL Server, according to this Microsoft blog summarizing the architectural requirements. However, Microsoft's announcement provided no such details in the case of the CS2C deal.