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Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 20:14:27 +0100
From: Martina Eckstein <meck@suse.de>
To: lwn@lwn.net
Subject:  "SuSE Linux Signs Worldwide Support Agreement With IBM"

Dear  LWN-Team,

please find enclosed our latest press release.

If you require further information on our products and services, 
please do not hesitate to send an e-mail to the address below.

Best regards 

Martina Eckstein

-----------------------------------------------

*** SuSE Linux Signs Worldwide Support Agreement With IBM ***

LinuxWorld Expo, New York, NY - January 31, 2001 - SuSE Linux, the 
international technology leader and solutions provider in Open 
Source operating system software, and IBM Global Services have 
signed a worldwide technical support agreement, covering a wide 
variety of platforms, including IBM eServers. According to the 
agreement, IBM Global Services will tap SuSE's expertise to help 
address customers' toughest Linux technical concerns, such as 
source code problems. 

"This is a major step forward for SuSE Linux as a worldwide 
trusted partner for Open Source solutions," comments SuSE's CTO 
Dirk Hohndel. "Together with IBM Global Services, we can offer 
superior services to support mission critical IT installations, 
even for the largest organizations."

IBM already delivers a full portfolio of technical services to 
help customers optimize and support Linux environments. For the 
toughest (Level 3) code issues, IBM will enlist SuSE's aid to help 
deliver appropriate bugfixes and patches. IBM and SuSE will make 
this Level 3 support available to customers worldwide.   

"By teaming together, we can help address technical issues SuSE 
distribution users may encounter, in a wide range of computing 
environments, from Enterprise servers down to the PC level," said 
Patricia Gibbs, vice president, Linux Services, IBM Global 
Services. 

Since the announcement of SuSE Linux Enterprise Server for zSeries 
(formerly S/390) in October, SuSE is the only company delivering a 
worldwide Linux distribution for IBM xSeries, pSeries and zSeries 
eServers. At this time, SuSE supports more IBM server platforms 
than any other commercially available Linux distribution.

*** About SuSE

SuSE Linux AG is the international technology leader and solutions 
provider in Open Source operating system (OS) software. SuSE´s 
unique expertise in Linux and their largest development team 
worldwide dedicated to Open Source software has contributed to the 
recognition of SuSE as a leader in Linux solutions. SuSE offers 
the largest support database to the public, and owns the largest 
hardware database in the Linux market. Furthermore, SuSE supports 
more hardware platforms than any other commercially available 
Linux distribution.

Designed for Web and enterprise server environments and efficient 
as a home and office platform, SuSE's distribution, surrounding 
features, effective configuration and intelligent design result in 
the most complete Linux solution available today.

SuSE Linux AG, headquartered in Germany, and SuSE Inc., based in 
Oakland, CA, are privately held companies focused entirely on 
supporting the Linux community and Open Source development. With a 
workforce of over 500 people worldwide, SuSE has offices all over 
Europe, Latin America and in the US. SuSE contributes considerably 
to Linux development projects such as the Linux kernel, glibc, 
XFree86TM, KDE, ISDN4Linux, ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound 
Architecture) and USB (Universal Serial Bus).

Additional information about SuSE can be found at 
http://www.suse.de/en/

Contact:
SuSE Linux AG
International PR
Martina Eckstein
e-mail: meck@suse.de
Phone: +49 911 74053-507