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The deal sees the leading Linux distros eating at the king's table alongside the likes of SAP and Cisco.

It opens up a number of synergies for the companies. IBM gets to resell Novell and Red Hat subscriptions alongside its existing solutions and can use its global sales and marketing footprint to take on emerging economies that are hungry for open source.

Indeed, IBM is setting up a dedicated sales channel to resell one- and three-year Linux server subscriptions, on IBM server hardware, or with IBM Global Services' SupportLine services, providing Linux support for systems running on both IBM and non-IBM server hardware.

IBM also benefits by guaranteeing support for its own moves in open source. Terms of the Strategic Alliance deal mean that Novell

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and Red Hat, for example, will promote the Apache Derby Java-based relational database. This is the result of Apache's work on IBM's Cloudscape database, which it contributed to open source.

A similar deal also exists for the Apache Geronimo J2EE application server, which Novell has agreed to distribute in its server platform, and Red Hat will work to certify and promote IBM's version of it, despite Red Hat having its own application server product.

The companies will also continue support for the IBM-sponsored Eclipse developer tool environment.
Novell and Red Hat gain access to IBM innovation centres, allowing them to quickly certify hardware and software systems, and giving the opportunity to use IBM's global sales division to massively expand the speed and aggression with which they can take on emerging economies.

In turn this means customers can satisfy pretty much all their hardware needs through a single channel.

'Red Hat is pleased to be expanding our partnership with IBM in ways that will benefit both large enterprise and SMB customers,' said Tim Yeaton, senior VP of Worldwide Marketing at Red Hat. 'In addition, IBM's development of a dedicated sales channel and commitment to resell our platform will broaden the reach of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and further our leadership position in the open source marketplace.'