Friday Five — November 6, 2015

Microsoft Corp. and Red Hat Inc., longtime rivals from conflicting camps of the software industry, plan to collaborate in the cloud. The companies announced a partnership to make Red Hat's version of the Linux operating system available to users of Microsoft Azure, the software company's cloud service. Under the deal, Microsoft agreed to designate Red Hat's Linux as its "referred" option for enterprise-style computing jobs on Azure. In addition, personnel from both companies will work together in Redmond, Wash.—Microsoft's hometown–to offer technical support to customers... The deal's unusual joint technical support structure is designed to make sure customers get problems resolved without having to go back and forth between separate service teams, the companies said. Besides Linux, Microsoft plans to allow Azure users to take advantage of other Red Hat programs such as JBoss. Note: Subscription required for full article.

The Fedora Project, a Red Hat, Inc., sponsored and community-driven open source collaboration, today announced the general availability of Fedora 23, marking a noteworthy first year of Fedora releases driven by the Fedora.next initiative... The latest edition of the Fedora operating system, Fedora 23, brings updated and enhanced versions of Fedora's three editions, all of which are built on a foundation of base packages, which includes updated versions of the Linux kernel, RPM, systemd, DNF and Anaconda. New to Fedora 23 is a "hardening" of these packages through the use of compiler flags, helping to prevent corruption, buffer overflows and other vulnerability issues.

There's one month left for Red Hat customers and partners to submit for the 2016 Red Hat Innovation Awards. These annual awards recognize the technological achievements of individuals, companies, and partners worldwide that demonstrate creative thinking, determined problem solving, and innovative use of Red Hat solutions. 1 winner will be picked from each of the 6 award categories, and an overall winner will be chosen at the 2016 Red Hat Summit in San Francisco next year. Nominate your company today.

Lenovo announced an extended strategic collaboration with Red Hat to deliver powerful IT infrastructure, automation and management capabilities including Red Hat Enterprise Linux Openstack Platform and CloudForms. Building on an open and flexible ecosystem to integrate easily with existing infrastructures, Lenovo servers, storage and networking combined with Red Hat software deliver a competitive and efficient cloud platform. Engaging with two of the industry's most trusted providers will help customers increase agility and efficiency in responding to new business opportunities and transform their cloud framework into a growth engine... Focusing on open standards, Lenovo and Red Hat will help customers change the economics of private and hybrid cloud computing and depend on a tailored and responsive engagement to overcome the complexities of deploying and managing cloud environments.

In a collaboration that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, Microsoft – the purveyor of the mainstream and proprietary Windows OS – has partnered with Red Hat, the champion of an enterprise-class iteration of Linux... The meat and potatoes of this relationship is the ability to run Red Hat software – most notably its market leading Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) – on Microsoft Azure virtual machines... Initially, Red Hat's existing customer licenses will be eligible to be used on Azure, and within a couple months Azure customers will have an opportunity to spin up cloud-based versions of RHEL and pay for them as they are used, the companies said... "I think it's a big win for both companies but a bigger win for Red Hat since Microsoft is now 'all in' with their distribution and technologies," says Nicholas Gerasimatos, director of cloud services engineering at FICO, a big Red Hat user.