On this Memorial day (pardon the pace of posting), a lot news will come from Australia, but some of it boggles the mind. Here, for example, you hear about Novell losing customers that choose to move to Microsoft. Questionable claims are being made. Are 10 Novell servers truly being replaced by just a single Microsoft Exchange server? With a shiny "Get the Facts" banner on the right-hand-side of the page, one must take this with a grain of salt.

It seems to be very fishy as it resembles similar claims that Microsoft made in the past about an IBM servers. Something such as this (awfully misleading advertising) led to serious investigations and Microsoft was told off for making an unbelievably laughable comparisons (e.g. ancient hardware against modern one running other bits of software).

Another appalling article comes from National Business Review (Web site located in New Zealand), which suggests that OOXML enables openness. Enough has been said, even recently, as to why OOXML is merely another monopoly enabler, which even tightens some screws. Here we have an article praising it when it fact it eliminates existing interoperability and helps protect the monopoly. The article only seems to support Microsoft's side and serves as an advertisement for some of their other products. Journalism and the media truly seem to have become a tool for corporate agenda.

On a brighter note, here is another article which also appeared in Australia this morning (CRN version is quoted below as it appears to be the original source). It mentioned Novell the context of migrations to Linux and Open Source technology.

Part of that may be due to the rise of Linux and open-source software as competitive options to Windows and other Microsoft products, particularly on the server side. Open-source software is creating more opportunities for custom systems builders, "especially in emerging markets where price points are looked on as more important than brand loyalty," says Mark Longwell, Novell business development director. And that, he says, is putting pressure on Microsoft.