SUSE and Xamarin Partner to Accelerate Innovation and Support Mono Customers and Community

NUREMBERG, Germany, July 18, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

- Xamarin granted broad rights to Mono; will continue development of mobile products and oversee Mono project

SUSE today announced it is partnering with Xamarin to bring products to market faster and to more effectively support customers using Mono®-based products. The agreement grants Xamarin a broad, perpetual license to all intellectual property covering Mono, MonoTouch, Mono for Android and Mono Tools for Visual Studio. Xamarin will also provide technical support to SUSE customers using Mono-based products, and assume stewardship of the Mono open source community project.

Mono is a software platform designed to allow developers to easily create cross-platform applications.  Mono helps developers leverage an extensive .NET ecosystem of code, libraries and tools to develop or port applications to non-Windows* platforms, including Linux*, Mac* OS X, Apple* iOS and Google Android*.  This agreement allows Xamarin to accelerate product commercialization, and more rapidly bring to market next-generation, cross-platform mobile application development tools based on Mono.

"Xamarin was founded with a mission to delight developers with the world's best platform for mobile development," said Nat Friedman, Xamarin founder and CEO.  "We're excited about the possibilities enabled by our partnership with SUSE and committed to helping current and future customers, our partners and the open source community."

The partnership agreement also ensures that current and future SUSE customers hosting applications on SUSE Linux Enterprise Mono Extension application server will continue to receive full commercial support for their platform from SUSE, backed by Xamarin.  Current SUSE customers using Mono developer tools, including MonoTouch, Mono for Android and Mono Tools for Visual Studio, will receive support and updates directly from Xamarin for the remainder of their subscription period.

"This partnership is a triple win -- a win for SUSE, a win for Xamarin, but most importantly, a win for our customers, users and community," said Nils Brauckmann, president and general manager of SUSE. "Our partnership ensures SUSE customers continue to get the best support possible, enables the bright team at Xamarin to achieve success in their promising new venture, and provides continuity of stewardship for the Mono open source community project in the very capable hands of its most passionate evangelists."

For more information about support options for SUSE, customers should go to http://www.suse.com/mono. For more information about Xamarin support for Mono, go to support.xamarin.com.

About SUSE

SUSE is a business unit of The Attachmate Group, the company that acquired Novell in April 2011. SUSE is a leading provider of enterprise Linux solutions that increase agility, reduce cost and manage complexity in dynamic environments. With a portfolio centered around SUSE Linux Enterprise, the most interoperable platform for mission-critical computing, SUSE enables organizations to confidently deliver computing services across physical, virtual and cloud environments. With our award-winning products, open source communities and ecosystem of partnerships, SUSE solutions empower thousands of organizations around the world. For more information, visit http://www.suse.com.

SUSE and Mono are registered trademarks of Novell, Inc. in the United States and other countries. *All third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.