Oracle today unveiled its own implementation of the Xen open source platform.

The application will join compete against VMware as well Xen based virtualization platforms from XenSource and Sun Microsystems.

Even though Oracle didn't make much of a fuss about it, the announcement has "Oracle Linux Repeat" written all over it.

Last year at Oracle Open World, the database vendor unveiled a "support program" for Red Hat Linux. In reality, Oracle launched its own Linux distribution which was based on Red Hat Linux. Customers would save money, but there was one major catch: applications supported for Red Hat Linux would not be supported on Oracle Linux. The market responded with a collective yawn.

12 Nov 2007

This time around, Oracle VM isn't labelled as a support programme for XenSource. That's probably because XenSource doesn't have anything near Red Hat's market share or brand recognition. Oracle VM is however drawing from the same well as Oracle Linux: Oracle VM for now will only support Oracle applications that Oracle claims you can run on top of Windows or Linux systems (which doesn't mean that Microsoft or say Red Hat will support it).

Oracle VM is great if you live in an all-Oracle-world. Admittedly, we are heading in that direction if you consider Oracle's current acquisition rate.

But we're not there yet, and few companies therefore will be appealed by Oracle VM.