Fresh on the heels of its eyebrow-raising interoperability pact with Novell and Novell's brand of Linux, Microsoft Tuesday kicked off an Interop Vendor Alliance with two-dozen other companies in the name of making their products work better with Microsoft systems.

Microsoft expects it to isolate problems in systems management, virtualization (like Novell), identity management, data integration, storage management, portal integration and the interoperability of developer tools.

It's supposed to be based on customer input, Microsoft having found customers a complaining lot lately, especially about this interoperability business.

Microsoft plans to host testing sessions on a per-scenario basis to validate real-life conditions and imagines members posting best-practices guides to make customers feel warm and cuddly.

It should also theoretically please the European Commission. Microsoft announced the alliance in Barcelona, maybe so the EC would make note. Naturally, observers are suspicious about Microsoft truly turning over a new leaf.

The founders, who are supposed to share information to solve problems, include AMD (but not Intel), BEA and Business Objects (but not Oracle or IBM), CA, Sun (whose own vaunted interoperability deal with Microsoft doesn't seem to have yielded all that much), NEC (but not HP), Novell again (but not Red Hat), XenSource (which already has an arrangement with Microsoft, but not VMware), SugarCRM (another open source house already in bed with Microsoft), NetApp and others that need the affinity like Centeris, Citrix, Software AG, Quest Software and Siemens Enterprise Communications as well as the Carbon Project, GXS, IP Commerce, JNBridge, Kernel Networks, Levi, Ray & Shoup, Q4bis, Symphony Services and Xcalia.