Novell disclosed details of a deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to provide hourly pricing and support services for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 10 and 11 on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). The announcement was made last week at LinuxCon in Boston.

Under the contract, both end customers and independent software vendors will pay only for the hours of SLES they use. In addition, Novell is providing a maintenance contract on AWS to allow customers to keep SLES current with bug fixes, patches, and features.

Amazon EC2 customers can buy maintenance subscriptions for enterprise Linux directly on Amazon's site without signing a separate license agreement, according to Novell.

"Amazon Web Services provides enterprise customers with secure, reliable, and utility-priced computing infrastructure as an on-demand service," said Terry Wise, director of business development at AWS, in a statement. "We are pleased to see Novell providing an easy way for customers to leverage the enterprise class SUSE Linux distribution on the Amazon EC2 platform. This offering provides enterprise customers and ISVs with a commercially maintained and supported Linux distribution that is easy-to-use and purchase."

Novell solution providers participating in the developer's SUSE Cloud Program can resell Novell technical support or offer customers their own support services, backed by Novell's offerings. Under the SUSE Cloud Program, Novell provides partners with certified Linux applications, a versatile Linux platform, and SUSE Studio, a solution for building cloud-based workloads, said Markus Rex, senior VP and general manager of open platform solutions at the company.

AWS, which expects to hit the $20-billion mark, joins service providers such as Fujitsu, IBM, Tencent, and Vodacom Business in the SUSE Cloud Program. The program includes more than 5,000 ISV applications, according to Novell.

"We are pleased that industry leaders like Amazon Web Services are able to leverage the SUSE Cloud Program to provide even more choices to their customers," Rex said in a statement.