Microsoft & Novell receives Frost & Sullivan award

MUMBAI, INDIA: Frost & Sullivan awarded Microsoft & Novell the Industry Innovation and Advancement Award for System Interoperability at its recently held '2007 India ICT Awards'. The award for Industry Innovation is presented each year to companies for broader, more comprehensive participation in the industry and contributions to the advancement of the market. This is the first time the award has been presented for interoperability.

"Interoperability is one of the top priorities for Microsoft and this award is a testament to our effort and investments in this area. We are focused on achieving Interoperability by design and by working closely with the industry, community and the standards bodies. We are excited about this prestigious award recognizing our approach to addressing the customer needs in partnership with Novell. This award further strengthens our commitment and we look forward to working closely with customers in India to help systematically address their interoperability needs," said Radhesh Balakrishnan, director- platform strategy, Microsoft India.

Enterprises are familiar with issues associated with working in a heterogeneous IT environment. Late last year, on November 2nd, 2006, Microsoft and Novell signed a landmark agreement focused on bridging the worlds of proprietary and open source technology with a focus on to improving interoperability for mixed IT environments.

The Novell and Microsoft alliance is based on a foundation to expand innovation and collaboration through a mutual respect for intellectual property. As a result, both organizations have collaborated to help improve Windows and Linux interoperability in four areas: virtualization, systems management, directory integration and identity, and office document formats. This technology will help customers reduce costs in their data centers, gain new levels of flexibility, and streamline operations, all with complete IP peace of mind.

"Enterprises today have geographically dispersed complex, heterogeneous hardware and software systems. The ability of systems to cooperate, communicate and use the information transferred amongst them, is interoperability, hence it becomes important to exploit the IT systems deployment. From a software perspective, interoperability of the systems is to exchange data based on common set of procedures, protocols, and formats. Microsoft and Novell, by signing to support interoperability between world's largest OS and popular Open Source Novell Suse Linux have committed to reduce the cost of operating hybrid systems," said Dr. T.R Madan Mohan, director (consulting), ICT Practice, Frost & Sullivan, South Asia & Middle East.

To choose a recipient of this award, the analyst team tracks emerging and existing markets and evaluates the contributions of industry participants. This is accomplished through interviews with all the market participants, and extensive secondary research. Industry contributions that are considered, are elements such as the creation of new industry standards and the adoption of a product or process by leading manufacturers. Finally, competitors are compared and ranked for relative position. Frost & Sullivan then narrows down and presents the award to the company that has most altered the industry due to its creativeness and innovation.