Foot-in-the-door? Having Linux as a deploy target allows a MS-heavy group to keep using their tools. The strategy of pretending nothing else exists won't work, so working well together must be done.

It seems that Linux vs Windows is often a fundamental question, so Microsoft is going to rule out all of their products if they can't say yes. Mono is plausible; I've been using it in production for years and processed billions of transactions with it. Microsoft adding more official help reassures the people that might otherwise dismiss Mono.

Microsoft still has some good product value. SQL Server is pretty fantastic as far as capabilities and getting them to work goes. Unfortunately their decision to go all Oracle on their licensing means a lot of people are going to be looking elsewhere. (Not adding "basic" things like JSON operators is also a bit embarrassing.) Office and Visual Studio are unrivaled.