Thursday, December 28, 2006

Unbreakable Linux Expectations

Unbreakable Linux Proves Unpopular as Red Hat Shares Rebound
Unbreakable Linux was downloaded 9,000 times in the first 30 days, according to comments made by Redwood Shores, California-based Oracle’s president Chuck Phillips during the company’s recent earnings call. Compare this with the download rates for Red Hat Inc and Novell Inc, however, and it is almost insignificant.

While it may seem Oracle's Unbreakable Linux program is not gaining the traction it should, I highly doubt that Larry expected to convert the masses. The program is more a signal of a continuous shift for Oracle to cover the entire IT stack. Meanwhile, Oracle makes a few bucks on services without a significant investment. Moreover, it's really a defensive move against operating system providers. Oracle wants to neutralize Microsoft’s dominance in the OS layer, prevent open source competitors like Red Hat from inching up the stack, and cover an area that IBM and SAP does not own. So I don't think Oracle is spending any sleepless nights worrying about the progress of its Linux program and comparing it against Red Hat or Novell.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

3/21/07 - "We're not going to build the Linux business overnight, but we will build it," Ellison said. "We're in the early days of our Linux support business, but we're off to a very solid start. Our Linux support service is up and running well. Dell, HP (Hewlett-Packard) and CDW (a computer products reseller) are on board to resell Oracle Enterprise Linux."

http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-6169488.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-5&subj=news