Oracles Linux Push Is a No-Brainer

Oracles Linux Push Is a No-Brainer
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Opinion: Microsoft is Oracle's most threatening rival in its quest to get its own piece of the Linux pie.Oracle wants to cook up its own stack, based on Linux and has pondered purchasing Novell as a quick way to get its own Linux flavor to kick-start the project, Larry Ellison recently told the Financial Times.

Thats a no-brainer. Oracle has been pushing Linux like mad for some time. Small wonder, given that it provides Oracle users who run on Microsofts operating system and applications with an alternative stack.

The IOUG (Independent Oracle Users Group) recently put out the results of a survey showing that only 7 percent of 812 surveyed Oracle shops run exclusively on Oracle, with the Microsoft product set being the closest contender at these sites: Seven out of 10 respondents support SQL Server.

Click here to read more on the IOUGs report.

Resource Library:

Oracles Linux push has paid off, with Linux in the coming year set to unseat HP-UX as the dominant operating system on which to run Oracle technology, according to the IOUGs survey.

Forget IBM and DB2; Microsoft is Oracles most threatening rival.

Microsofts control over the Windows operating system and its applications have given it a complete stack for some time now.

More recently, Red Hats announced acquisition of JBoss means that it, too, is set to be a serious threat to Oracle, given that it has grown that much closer to offering a complete stack.

So why not buy Red Hat? As Ellison told the Financial Times, the price was just too steep, particularly when youre talking about open-source—in other words, free—software.

Click here to read more about Oracles push to become a Linux power.

"I dont see how we could possibly buy Red Hat... Im not going to spend $5 billion, or $6 billion, for something that can just be so completely wiped off the map," Ellison was quoted as saying in the FT. He also said that he had considered making an offer on Novell.

Novell is too expensive as well. Why pay billions for Novell SUSE Linux when there are much cheaper and more deployed Linux distributions out there, with robust communities in place, to be had for probably what would amount to a few million?

I had a recent conversation with Richard Monson-Haefel, an analyst with Burton, in which he told me that Ellison is likely telling us he doesnt have to buy a company with a huge existing open-source presence.

Instead, Ellison likely wants to buy an existing variation of Linux around which Oracle can build a community.

Next Page: Strong contenders.

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