Banking giant HSBC is taking advantage of the collaboration between Microsoft and Novell.

Microsoft will provide HSBC with certificates for three-year priority support subscriptions to Suse Linux Enterprise Server from Novell, enabling the bank to reduce its total cost of ownership for Linux and improve interoperability with its existing Microsoft Windows infrastructure

‘The Microsoft-Novell agreement is a great catalyst to helping us reduce the complexity of our Linux environment as we standardise our Linux infrastructure with Suse Linux Enterprise and continue to extend the use of Microsoft Active Directory,’ said Matthew O’Neill, group head of distributed systems for HSBC global IT operations.

‘Some will be surprised to learn that our Windows environment has a lower total cost of ownership than our current Linux environment,' he said.

'Our decision to simplify our mixed-source environment with Microsoft and Novell will allow us to reduce the cost and complexity.'