Virtualization-technology provider VMware is pursuing an acquisition of Novell's SUSE Linux operating system business, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed sources.

According to the WSJ report, Novell is talking with at least two buyers, one of whom is VMware, about selling the company "in separate pieces" and the talks are in advanced stages. The other potential buyer is Attachmate, also a software company.

VMware and Novell already have an extensive relationship, which expanded in June when the two companies struck an agreement whereby VMware will be distributing and providing support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) operating system. The operating system is available to VMware's vSphere customers, who also get patches and updates for the OS as part of their vSphere license.

According to the two companies, benefit of the solution for customers is the ability to move their SUSE Linux-based workloads across cloud infrastructures.

VMware and Novell also collaborate on helping independent software vendors build SUSE Linux Enterprise-based virtual appliances and MVware Ready virtual appliances. The two companies also provide the SLES operating system as a fully supported guest operating system running on ESX, VMware's hypervisor product. Finally Novell, VMware and SAP provide support for SAP customers migrating from Unix to VMware-virtualized SLES.