"The fact that we can make our products interoperate with other products creates a better user experience," said Chris Sharp, Microsoft's general manager for server and tools for Asia-Pacific.
Microsoft launched Port25 (http://port25.technet.com) earlier last month at LinuxWorld in Boston. The portal aims to provide information about Microsoft's interoperability efforts with Linux and open-source, anchored on its own 'Linux Labs' based in Redmond, Washington.
In the Philippines, Sharp said there are users on Microsoft's Windows platform that have been running heterogeneous IT environments, noting in particular telecommunication companies which rank among the heaviest IT users in the country.
Sharp describes Port25 as a "forum" by which Microsoft is listening to interoperability issues and concerns within the tech community that, directly and indirectly, affect end-users. Port25 is the SMTP port that sends and receives e-mail on a server, and facilitates two-way communication.
He said, however, that the portal is neither meant to be a repository of open source applications nor will it issue a "seal of approval" for such applications to run on the Windows platform.
At the very least, he said users can benefit from open source expertise from the portal, which follows a blog-style format with posts from Microsoft resource persons.
Microsoft also released recently the latest version of Virtual Server 2005, which allows users to run Windows alongside versions of Linux in a virtual server environment. Virtualization allows companies to consolidate applications in a single hardware, and is primarily conducted to save on acquisition costs and improve hardware utilization.
"The challenge (in server consolidation) is how to make each application run on top of a single OS," Sharp said, although he noted that Microsoft's tool supports the 'virtualized' image and not the Linux OS itself.
He added Virtual Server 2005 now supports nine different versions of Linux including those by Red Hat, Novell and Suse Linux.