Novell and Microsoft claim to have signed up over 100 customers, and successfully developed a number of new products since signing a joint interoperability agreement in November 2006.

As an example, Novell said today that it will ship a new plug-in for Microsoft's management tools to enable users to manage Novell's SUSE Linux from the same console.

The SUSE Linux Enterprise Management Pack for Microsoft System Centre Operations Manager has been designed to extend monitoring capabilities within Operations Manager 2007 R2 across seven SUSE Linux Enterprise operating system services.

This latest tool follows on from the companies' first jointly developed product, launched last November, for optimising Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 running as a guest operating system on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.

The pair also claimed that their combined customer sign-up rate had doubled since the 2006 agreement, and that they had sold more than $200m (£121m) worth of certificates for Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server support and maintenance to more than 300 customers.

"The relationship has substantially benefited Microsoft's Linux integration story, and has driven Linux revenue for Novell," said Jay Lyman, an analyst at The 451 Group.

"The development and work by the two companies to improve Linux and Windows interoperability addresses the reality of mixed enterprise environments for customers who were largely the impetus for this collaboration and are now benefiting from the resulting technology and support."