Red Hat, Microsoft sign virtualisation interoperability agreement

An agreement has been reached between Red Hat and Microsoft to allow the two firms' virtualisation platforms to be interoperable with each other, those looking for web hosting may be interested to note.

The deal will see each organisation join the other's validation and certification programs for virtualisation and offer coordinated technical support to server virtualisation clients.

Red Hat will validate Windows Server users to be supported on Red Hat Enterprise virtualisation technologies, while Microsoft will do the same for Red Hat Enterprise Linux server users to be supported on Windows Server Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V Server.

According to research from IDC, Windows and Red Hat Enterprise Linux are two of the biggest operating environments used by businesses.

"It is great to see two of the big platform vendors put aside their competitive differences and put the customer first," said Gary Chen of IDC.

Red Hat launched its Enterprise Linux 5.3 operating platform last month.