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October 25, 2006 2:59 PM PDT
Oracle to offer Red Hat Linux support
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Ellison has suggested for months that the company had Linux plans, and recently, rumors have swirled that Oracle OpenWorld would be the forum for an official announcement.
Oracle can try to use open-source software to gain competitive advantage, but the open-source movement is also providing the company with lots of competition. Most directly are databases such as MySQL and PostgreSQL, but also on the list are Java application servers and software for managing customer relationships and corporate inventory and accounting.
Oracle is watching the open-source moves closely, including Red Hat's acquisition of JBoss. Wednesday's Oracle move was a pre-emptive move to impede further Red Hat moves up the software stack, said Rick Sherlund, a Goldman Sachs analyst.
Oracle's influence is broad, and the company wooed several Red Hat allies into its camp. Videotaped endorsements came from Dell Chairman Michael Dell, Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd, Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini, Advanced Micro Devices CEO Hector Ruiz, EMC Chief Executive Joe Tucci and Network Appliance CEO Dan Warmenhoven. Bill Zeitler, head of IBM's server group, also endorsed Oracle's move in a separate statement.
"Dell customers can choose Unbreakable Linux 2.0 running on Dell PowerEdge servers," Dell said, adding that Dell is itself a customer. And Hurd said, "We're excited about supporting the Unbreakable Linux platform for mutual customers."
Yahoo, a major user of Linux on its 150,000 servers, uses Oracle's Linux support, said Laurie Mann, the Web company's vice president of engineering.
Less than half Red Hat's priceEllison repeatedly complained that current Linux companies often fix bugs in new versions but not current products in use, adding that Oracle will provide such support. However, that level of service--along with indemnification and lifetime support--costs a significant notch more: $1,199 for a two-processor server and $1,999 for a larger system. In addition, current Oracle customers can try the Oracle Linux service free for 90 days, and all customer can get the service for half price through Jan. 31.
Red Hat's support price, including the round-the-clock support Oracle offers in all its plans, is $2,499 per year for larger servers. For servers with up to two processors, Red Hat offers support for only 12 hours a day, five days a week, which costs $799 per year.
Oracle believes Red Hat will find itself in a difficult position should it try to throw roadblocks in Oracle's way when accessing Red Hat's Linux.
"We don't see what barriers they can erect without hurting their users," said Edward Screven, Oracle's chief corporate architect.
He said that Oracle certifies its software with Red Hat and that it has "every intention" to continue doing so. As a result, customers who don't move to Oracle's Linux won't be left out, he said.
Oracle's move isn't likely to change the Linux market overnight, though it will pressure Red Hat's prices, said RedMonk analyst Stephen O'Grady. "I think mainstream Linux customers will play a wait-and-see game. Platform decisions are not made quickly or easily," he said. "Red Hat customers are likely to benefit here, as Oracle Linux will act as a check on Red Hat pricing."
But paradoxically, the move could bolster the dominant position of Red Hat--or at least of its software.
"I suspect that in the short term, this will be a problem in terms of perception and customer apprehension," O'Grady said. "In the longer term, this could actually reinforce Red Hat's preeminence."
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Red Hat Inc., Larry Ellison, Oracle Corp., Red Hat Linux, Linux seller
17 comments
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So, what happens when RedHat goes out of business?
Will Oracle be able to update the OS on their own?
Is Microsoft behind this just like they have been behind SCO?
but I don't think they do it at the expense of
RedHat. Remember that RedHat is far from the
only vendor offering Linux support, contributing
patches and development, etc. They aren't even
the biggest company doing so -- just ask IBM.
It'll be interesting to see how Oracle does
because just about every product they have
outside their core database is second-rate (to
be polite). I'm not sure that they have the
resources or commitment to do a better job than
RedHat or manage updates and fixes in a sane
manner. It also goes without saying that
back-ports and bug-fixes will also be
open-source, so Oracle has no particular
advantage there. The claim that one need to
replace the OS to get bug-fixes for many
products is also weak as it's not true, and
Oracle plans only to offer backports for an
extra 6 months (and, as RedHat critics
point-out, back-ports are one of the worst
things about the RedHat distribution).
I don't think MS is behind this at all. As a
matter of fact, Ellison's initial comments on
taking up a Linux mantle expressed his disgust
with Microsoft and his personal view that it's
in Oracle's best interest for the OS to become a
commodity that Oracle can provide and support to
its own liking.
For development and testing servers, everyone likes to play with CentOS: it's a RedHat without the trademark and symbols, but fully compatible with Redhat offering. RedHat doesn't have any problems with it actually.
When it comes to production servers, Everyone either buys a RedHat license. RedHat has actually some good pricing, depends on the numbers of server you're running with their OS.
So what Oracle offer is? to give me their "support"? yeah, I've seen their so-called "support" with RAC and a Linux server that kept crashing. If I want the latest patches without paying to RedHat for the support contract, I can easily takes CentOS updates and put them on the RedHat server.
RedHat, With 90% returning customers for their support offerring, has clearly withstanded competitions from wide free and/or commercial "competitors" - be it Novell/SuSE, CentOS, Sun (which gave up pretty fast), and tons of others. RedHat customers kept coming back to renew their contract year after year.
Good Luck Oracle, you're giving me an offer of 50% off the price, but you don't have any Linux distribution experience compared to what RedHat had till today (since 1993) and I preffer to pay a bit more, but at least I have support from the same guys who gave me the OS.
Hetz
But the fact that Oracle does it shows that RHAT and other Linux distributors have been living in a dream. Their business model is "develop software, give it away and live off support". But there's nothing preventing another company from establishing a slightly more interesting business model: "NOT develop software, take what's already out there, give it away, live off cheaper support". Nothing bad with that, but then the companies investing in developing Linux will have a cost center with nothing to show for it. Why would any serious company spend money on something that gives zero $ in return? Net result: corporate Linux development is stalled, and only development comes from individuals and nonprofit organizations. Not the death of Linux, but certainly a bad sign.
And the crazy thing is that this was evident from day zero. But some tried to look the other way, especially investors trying to look into some innovative business models.
Now it's time for a reality check. And RHAT stock is just beginning to show the consequence of that reality.
software development they do do, they do as part
of their service. Sure, you can download GFS,
for example, but if you want GFS to have feature
X, who do you call? If you want to plan a
deployment based on it?
The difference here is that the OS is no longer
the product, it's a commodity. Like corn, anyone
that wants to can grow it and sell it. But ADM
takes that same corn and delivers lots of it, in
various pre-processed forms and will negotiate
for delivery, grade, form, work on setting up
supply chain and storage, etc. Same with RedHat.
They could still forgo development outright and
the product would still grow and evolve, bugs
will get fixed, etc. When they pour money into
development it's to steer the evolution towards
something they can market services around and to
give something back to the community (who turns
around and improves their product).
CentOS is a good example of RedHat without the
cost. No support (well, maybe a little now and
then), and no development overhead, save for the
actual process of building the packages. They
sell the same commodity but without the services
on top and make a small amount on a nominal
charge for the media and labor in its
preparation.
- rmjb
ajay
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.innerdep.com" target="_newWindow">http://www.innerdep.com</a>
As far as ISVs are concerned, there's no need for certification fr most versions of Linux, and if they follow some simple best practices, they can be assured they're products will work with any flavor. At worst, they need to aim for perhaps 3 major flavors, all of which more alike than the two XPs, 2 W2Ks, W2K3, and 7 Vistas.
Call Oracle, the number they gave on this Ad which ran in such places ad WSJ and you will see what I mean. I called them, after 3 attempts I finally got to a person who:
1- Did not know what version of Linuix Oracle was
supporting. Imagine something as elementary as which version of Linux are you supporting he could not reply to.
2- Did not know what the support entailed. Can you imagine that!
3- Asked him if support means whether they would remotely access our server and fix our Linux installation he replied they have no means of remotely accessing servers!
Free Winscp would do it.
etc. At the end he said that they really do not know anything, not much, but anything about this offering of support for Linux by Oracle!!!
This is one more Hoax coming out of Silicon Valley. Certainly not on par of Google buying UTube for $1.6Bill Hoax, which was purely one
hand of Sequoia venture selling to the other hand to jack up the price of Google so they
could dump Google shares on public, but still pretty big Hoax.
P.S., Oracle provides support of Oracle DB at about $50K per year per server, starting.
So if they charge $50,000+ per year for Oracle DB Support, how the HEK are they going
to provide Linux support for $399 per year.
I can understand, if someone say _Novell support Oracle_ (very poor support, but it exists), but redHat.. hmm, it is not a support, it is fiction (mainly).
One of the reasons of Oarcle's move is _they are tired of fragmentation_. In reality,e ach next release means _compatibility problems_, _libraries removed_, _new features are not compatible_ (tlb support), async io bugs and so on... On the other hand, Oracle don't need 99% of Linux features which are introduced with the new versions (it dont have any benefits not from RHEL5 not from SLES10, except online ext3 resize on SLES and XEN on RHEL5).
On the other hand, they have thibgs to integrate:
- Linux
- SAN drivers
- Oracle RAC
- ASM
- OCFSv2
- heartbeat
- Cluster volume manager
- Oracle start/stop/ management scripts for oracle itself.
For now, only Novell integrate some of this things (without big success, but at least somehow), including (for example) heartbeat2 + evms + ocfsv2 integration.
So, let's see how it all works together.