Red Hat CEO on Microsoft, Novell customers

The Red Hat stock continues to increase (RHT up almost 30% on the month), mostly as a result of beating Wall Street expectations last week. During the earnings call with analysts, Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik was asked about Microsoft's announcement of three joint customers with Novell this week. His response:
“Those were existing accounts and there is at least one of them that I can speak definitely that is also a Red Hat account,” Szulik said. “So those were older engagements and we were not involved in competitive situations with those two or three years ago when they became Novell accounts.”
The existing Red Hat account would presumably be Credit Suisse. And one of the existing Novell customers is Deutsche Bank, whose chief technology officer, Clemens Jochum, said in the joint news release that the Microsoft-Novell deal “gives us the benefit of choice of platforms and tremendous flexibility that will help make our company more competitive and efficient.”
On that subject, the VAR Guy blog pointed out this week (see Dec. 20 post) that Deutsche Bank, “was an early investor in SuSE Linux, so it's hardly surprising that the firm's IT team now praises the Novell-Microsoft deal.”
An interesting perspective on the announcement, which I covered here. It should also be noted that Deutsche Bank was also subpoenaed by IBM in the SCO case. Google for more details, but while not directly related to this, it could give you some insight into their general mindset. I'm a bit intrigued into how 2007 will treat both NOVL and RHT.
–jeremy
Red Hat, RHT, Novell, NOVL, Linux, Open Source