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

NUREMBERG, Germany, July 18, 2011 -

- 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 href="www.novell.com/products/monotools-for-visualstudio/">Mono
Tools for Visual Studio. Xamarin will also provide technical
support to SUSE customers using
Mono-based products, and assume stewardship of the href="www.mono-project.com/">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 href="www.suse.com/mono">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 href="www.suse.com./">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.

SUSE, Amie Johnson, +1-801-641-6349, amie at suse.com, or PAN Communications, Michael O’Connell, +1-617-502-4362, suse at pancomm.com