A media release from Red Hat said as a key part of the deal, Microsoft would offer Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the preferred choice for enterprise Linux workloads on Azure.

It said Microsoft Azure would become a Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Provider. Red Hat Cloud Access subscribers would be able to use their own virtual machine images on Microsoft Azure.

Customers would be offered cross-platform, cross-company support spanning the Microsoft and Red Hat offerings in an integrated way, the release said.

There would also be unified workload management across hybrid cloud deployments.

Finally, there will be collaboration on .Net development. As an extension of the .Net on Linux preview announced by Microsoft in April, developers will have access to .Net technologies across Red Hat offerings, including Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, jointly backed by Microsoft and Red Hat.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux will be the primary development and reference operating system for .NET Core on Linux.

The announcement comes two days into SUSECon, the annual conference of Germany-based SUSE Linux, which opened in Amsterdam on November 2. SUSE has, until this announcement, been the main Microsoft collaborator among commercial Linux companies. SUSE signed a deal with Microsoft in 2006 and renewed it until the end of 2015.

Comment has been sought from the company as to how the Red Hat deal will affect its interactions with Microsoft.