Computerworld: Q&A: Novell CEO Gives Behind-the-Scenes Account of Deal with Microsoft

“How did the agreement with Microsoft come to pass? Who
approached whom, and when? This past May, I picked up the
phone and called Kevin Turner, the COO at Microsoft. I knew Kevin
when he was the CIO at Wal-Mart. I said, ‘Kevin, I’d like to have a
conversation about what the customer needs. If you could put back
on your old hat as a customer, if I came in and started talking to
you about virtualization on Linux, and this Microsoft guy showed up
and started talking to you about virtualization on Windows, what
would you say to us?’ Kevin, being a good ex-IT executive, said,
‘I’d want both of those things together. I don’t want the fighting;
I don’t want to deal with it. I’d tell you two guys to go figure
out how to make it work.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s why I’m calling.
How do we make that work around virtualization…?'”

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