SuSE wins partial BMC support

SuSE Linux has won the backing of BMC Software, an established seller of management applications--but the support doesn't span SuSE's entire product line.

BMC described its support at the LinuxWorld Frankfurt trade show a day after news that SuSE had signed another key software partner, Veritas Software. BMC said Wednesday that it now backs Deployment Manager, Patrol and Mainview software packages on SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 8.0.

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However, BMC doesn't support the full range of hardware SLES runs on. Its software runs on the SLES operating system for Intel servers, IBM mainframes and Itanium-based systems. However, there aren't versions for IBM's iSeries midrange server or its pSeries Unix server, both of which can run Linux. And there is no version that can take full advantage of Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron processor, though that chip can also run the software that's intended for related processors such as Intel's Xeon or AMD's Athlon.

BMC and SuSE are in discussions about joint promotional events and marketing activities, BMC said.

The partnerships are part of SuSE's effort to match Red Hat, which leads the Linux market and already has several such alliances. SuSE is "behind, but catching up" in its partnerships, said Katherine Egbert, an analyst at C.E. Unterberg Towbin.

And SuSE has a longer way to go when compared to operating systems such as Sun Microsystems' Solaris that have been in the market for much longer. "Solaris is obviously way ahead," Egbert said.