On last year's landmark marketing and IP agreement with Novell, Bond also talked up the benefits the deal will bring for interoperability between Windows and SUSE Linux.

"It is what customers have asked us to do [and] the feedback we have received is not about patents but about the two vendors working together," she said. "The future is solid as both Windows and SUSE Linux will interoperate and be manageable."

"I feel positive about benefits in the short term and this calendar year customers will begin to benefit from it as the engineering has already started."

Demonstrating this, Microsoft's Port25 blog has started advertising positions in the company's open source software lab to work on Microsoft and SUSE Linux interoperability.

Bond said there have been a lot of requests about what the agreement means and many customers are excited about virtualization, directory integration, and a single management for mixed environments.