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SUSE distinguishes between the products that are regarded as being for business customers and those categorized as for the home user. This distinction is seen in the way the products are presented in SUSE publicity materials and on all SUSE websites.
The business products are sold bundled with a software maintenance agreement and generally are not available separately from that agreement, except in certain cases on evaluation terms. They are also the products on which SUSE is prepared to offer commercial high-level support.
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Details of SUSE's maintenance and support are available at www.suse.com/us/business/services/support/index.html and www.suse.co.uk/uk/business/services/support/index.html. |
The business products have a long life (generally 5 years from initial release). In the case of the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server different versions are available and current at the same time: there is approximately a 2-year release cycle and a 5-year product life. This policy means that support and maintenance for SLES 8 will continue through the release of SLES 9 and will only cease after the release of SLES 10.
The OpenExchange server differs from most of SUSE's other offerings in that it is partly composed of proprietary software: the groupware functionality is provided by the ComFire application server from Netline. This software requires licenses for the groupware clients, with the license fee calculated according to the number of concurrent users who will be making use of the groupware functionality. Client access to the OpenExchange server purely as a mail server (POP3 or IMAP) is license free.
The SUSE Linux Desktop is offered on a per-machine license basis because it contains certain third-party licensed products, notably StarOffice and CodeWeavers Crossover office. The payment for the license for these is included in the initial maintenance payment.
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