In another twist of events HP has signed an agreement to sell Sendmail"s e-mail software. This comes as another blow to Microsoft from its longtime ally. Up till now HP has sold only Microsoft"s Exchange software. So far HP has agreed to put iTunes on its consumer desktop PCs, provide support for MySQL, and support JBoss. Looks like Microsoft"s ally is trying to get the attention of the open source community.
Hewlett-Packard has signed an agreement to sell Sendmail"s e-mail software, the latest move by the longtime Microsoft ally to also woo open-source players.
Under the agreement, announced Thursday, the computer maker may sell some of Sendmail"s products, chiefly aimed at combating spam, with its ProLiant servers. The deal grew out of a narrower relationship, a joint marketing pact begun in 2001, said Greg Olson, executive vice president of business development for Sendmail. "Joint marketing and co-marketing is kind of like dating. Reselling is like going steady," Olson said.
HP has a long history of working with Microsoft--whose Exchange software competes with Sendmail--but the computer maker sells Linux and has recently signed on new open-source software partners. In May, HP announced that it would provide support for two significant open-source server software packages, the MySQL database and the JBoss application server for running Java programs.