If Oracle commits to Solaris, will IBM buy Red Hat?

Katherine Egbert has predicted (again) that Red Hat will be bought, this time by IBM. While I have indulged my own Red Hat acquisition fantasies in the past, I just can't see a near-term acquisition of Red Hat by IBM.

Unless....

Unless, as Egbert predicts, Oracle will throw its weight fully behind Sun's Solaris, to the detriment of its Linux business:

It seems inevitable Oracle will favor Solaris. While Oracle has said publicly they will continue support of RHEL, there is a sense within Red Hat that an increased focus on Open Solaris over RHEL is inevitable, as Oracle seeks to protect the declining Solaris maintenance stream. We estimate that 1/3 of Red Hat's new business comes from Unix-to-Linux migrations. The danger to Red Hat is that Oracle will offer customers attractive terms terms to stay on Solaris, potentially even paying them not to migrate.

Maybe. It's no secret that Oracle has been trying to undermine its dependence on Red Hat while satisfying its customers' preference for Linux. But this is the very reason that I can't see even Oracle, with all its market power, being able to stem the tide toward Linux and away from Unix.

Indeed, I can't even see why Oracle would bother. There's so much more money in its applications and databases. Why bother with trying to push Solaris boulders uphill when its primary concern should be ensuring prospective customers choose its applications and databases over IBM's and Microsoft's, a choice that is made easier by Linux and harder with Solaris?

Regardless, I don't see IBM buying Red Hat unless pushed to do so: Oracle promoting Solaris over Linux is unlikely to be that "push." Regardless, I personally think Cisco is the more likely suitor for Red Hat than either IBM or Oracle.

All of which means Red Hat remains an intriguing acquisition target for several big companies, due to its exceptional performance through the downturn, but it's unlikely to go to IBM soon.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

[SIGHUP]

?Oracle has been trying to undermine its dependence on Red Hat? What dependence? Last I checked Oracle runs on just about everything from Debian to windows.

[Matt Asay]

"Dependence" might be too strong, but if you look at what Linux distribution most of Oracle's customers use, it's RHEL. So while it runs on much, the reality is that it's focused on RHEL.

[dragonbite]

Thus why Oracle tried to come out with a Red Hat knock-off which hasn't done so well.

[SIGHUP]

@dragonbite

What Redhat knockoff?

[Matt Asay]

Agreed on Oracle's Unbreakable Linux as a RHEL clone. Oracle, to its credit, was very upfront why it cloned RHEL: because that's where the customers are, and all it was trying to do was siphon those customers to the Red Hat brand over to Oracle's brand. It hasn't really worked, but Oracle was smart to try.

[ewsachse]

Why prefer Solaris over Linux?

Very simple. If you have ever developed software on either system, Solaris wins hands down. If you have ever supported a large Oracle transactional system on either system, Solaris wins hands down.

To quote Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. - Freedom is not Free.
Just because RHEL gives you freedom of the source code, it does not mean that it does not come with hidden costs. Software engineers who have experience with both systems in large production systems know that when the rubber meets the road, Linux blows out a tire while Solaris takes off at full speed.

[Matt Asay]

But I wasn't arguing technical superiority, which Solaris may or may not have. It doesn't matter if the customer wants Linux, and *all* the numbers point to Linux winning out over Solaris (and Unix).

[Mr. Dee]

"stem the tide toward Linux and away from Unix."

Depends on your definition of Unix Matt. The last time I checked, Mac OS X is the most popular desktop Unix with year of year growth. Where is Linux in the market growth area? It has failed on Netbooks and its failing on the desktop. Windows 7 is coming in a few to wrap this up.

[Matt Asay]

Good point, but I was referring to the server market, which I should have clarified. As a Mac user, i certainly wasn't trying to disparage the Mac. :-)

[dragonbite]

I'm hoping nobody buys Red Hat anytime soon. I think they'll be much more effective if they stay independent partially because they do have a huge Community backing.

[coda54321]

I suspect that Oracle will respond to market demand for Oracle on Linux and won't be able to move people to Solaris. It's not clear they would even want to try.

[saltylaker]

A RedHat win at the expense of OpenSolaris is like a RedHat win over Debian or Suse. These are all open source operating systems (Posix compliant, based on System V) with very similar command-line and graphical user interfaces.

The problem for Sun was that when people moved off Solaris it meant that they moved off Sun hardware.

Since Solaris and Sun hardware have been decoupled for some time now, it is hard for me to see any objective benefit (technical differences aside) of using RedHat over OpenSolaris. It seems many open-source startups have tied their success to the success of RedHat. At this point, I do not see the industry benefit of why a RedHat success would be better than a Suse or OpenSolaris success.

[Phobos11]

linux is not based on System V, and it's mostly POSIX compliant. In fact, it's not based on any UNIX release, it's a clone, a copy.

Solaris/OpenSolaris is based on UNIX System V R4, but has since changed and evolved a lot. Still, it's fully POSIX compliant, but it's not linked in any way to the linux kernel development.

[JoeWork]

If you work for Sun, IBM, Oracle, Redhat

Signs you may be on their next RIF list see:

http://joewantswork.blogspot.com/