RE: Oracle encouraging Linux software developers

Jacques

    I think there are several factors that push Oracle toward Linux. 1. Success of Linux gives Oracle a platform with one less competitor (Microsoft).
2. While Oracle has done well selling on the Microsoft platforms, they never forget that Microsoft is both a platform and a competitor. 3. Linux and open source are the sexy new fads. Just being close to them makes you look more attractive.
4. Oracle has just survived Microsoft's giveaway marketing practices. They surely don't welcome competition with MySQL. Better to establish a Linux-Oracle connection in everyone's mind, rather than Linux-MySQL. 5. While most Linux systems today are quite small, and therefore only small revenue for Oracle, tomorrow we may see large Liunx systems as the norm. 6. Oracle has a strong history of picking tomorrow's platforms. My recollection is that they jumped on the Unix bandwagon pretty early.  

IBM is loudly touting how much money they will be spending on Linux. Has anyone seen any sales statistics for DB2 on non-IBM platforms? I feel that IBM has a challenge to convince buyers to consider DB2 on Linux.

Dennis Williams
DBA, 40%OCP, 100% DBA
Lifetouch, Inc.
dwilliams_at_lifetouch.com

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2003 1:14 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

So your interpretation would be: Oracle is not so much pushing Linux at the expense of Microsoft, but ensuring their dominance in the emerging Linux database market. Though of course a strong Linux market will also be a market in which presumably Microsoft will not try to compete with Oracle, unless Microsoft decides to port SQL Server to Linux.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: DENNIS WILLIAMS [ mailto:DWILLIAMS_at_LIFETOUCH.COM
<mailto:DWILLIAMS_at_LIFETOUCH.COM> ]
>
> Jacques - We often don't realize that at end-user sites we look at the
> immediate computer marketplace. Any vendor that did that
> would be out of
> business in a couple of years. A vendor, like Oracle, must
> predict where the
> the market will be in a couple of years. About two years ago
> the META Group
> predicted that in about 5 years most servers sold would be
> running one of
> three operating systems:
> 1. Windows
> 2. Linux
> 3. Solaris
>
> As near as I can tell, they are on the mark. The other Unix
> vendors are
> showing signs of shifting to Linux. Obviously they won't announce that
> directly since they need to keep selling computers today.
> From Oracle's point of view, they don't care who is the
> winner, just
> that Oracle is the leading database, and not something like MySQL.
> ...

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Author: DENNIS WILLIAMS
  INET: DWILLIAMS_at_LIFETOUCH.COM

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