SUSE was the first Linux company to partner with Microsoft, when its then parent Novell signed a patent licensing deal with the Redmond juggernaut in 2006.

The Microsoft-Red Hat expanded deal builds on a cloud agreement signed a little less than two years ago.

Asked where SUSE stood in view of the fact that Red Hat, whose revenue dwarfs that of the Germany company, would obviously be a preferred partner for Microsoft, a company spokesman said, pointing to the announcement of the deal: "I don't see where it says Red Hat is 'preferred'. Perhaps I'm missing something."

What's in your toolkit for #containers? We've expanded our offerings, staying true to "open" #opensource https://t.co/nOfu8cc29Z pic.twitter.com/6cCvIxjzsC

— SUSE (@SUSE) 23 August 2017

The tweet rather pointedly makes mention of the fact that all SUSE's offerings are open source. The company has in the past hinted that Red Hat's offerings are not completely open.

"Microsoft and SUSE are great partners, and obviously both companies have many other great partners, some of whom may compete with each other," the spokesman added.

He asked for a clarification about the word "preferred", and iTWire pointed out that given Red Hat's reach compared to SUSE, marketshare would ensure it is a preferred partner. 

Further it was pointed out thatthe deal is all about containers, technology that SUSE has been developing in recent times.

The spokesman has not yet responded to this.

Earlier this year, SUSE announced a beta of its container-as-a-service platform which it first announced at its annual company conference in 2016.

The CaaS is an application development and hosting platform for container applications and services.