Oracle believes that Red Hat is unable to match Oracle VM
Larry Ellison levels guns at Red Hat
/v3-uk/news/2011691/larry-ellison-levels-guns-red-hat
15 Nov 2007, Iain Thomson , V3
Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison used his closing keynote at Oracle OpenWorld to make it clear that his company is gunning for Red Hat.
Ellison said that Oracle is growing its Linux business quickly and winning over customers daily without dedicating a sales force to the project. He also accused Red hat of having "buggy code".
"Oracle has been in the Linux business for a year now. With the Red Hat code all we did for the first year was fix bugs," he said.
"Now Oracle is growing a lot faster than Red Hat. Red Hat has been growing too because it is a growing market."
Ellison maintained that this week's launch of Oracle VM gave Oracle something that Red Hat could not match.
Oracle unveiled the Oracle VM virtualisation server on Monday based on the Xen open source technology. Red Hat has incorporated Xen into its Linux distribution.
Ellison also pointed out that Oracle had set up systems that would let Red Hat users switch to Oracle in a matter of minutes.
He also announced that the first Fusion applications would be released next year, although he refused to be drawn on when.
The first modules would be for sales force automation and the software would integrate totally with Oracle's ERP software.
In the much longer term Ellison said that Oracle would rewrite all its applications to include a version of Fusion. But he warned that this could take 10 to 15 years.
Ellison was introduced for his keynote by Billy Joel, who is performing at tonight's 30th birthday party for the company.
"I'm excited to be here," said Joel. "But considering how many car accidents I've had over the last few years I'm just excited to be anywhere."
© Incisive Media Investments Limited 2010, Published by Incisive Financial Publishing Limited, Haymarket House, 28-29 Haymarket, London SW1Y 4RX, are companies registered in England and Wales with company registration numbers 04252091 & 04252093
Do you agree?
Buggy code?
"With the Red Hat code all we did for the first year was fix bugs. Now Oracle growing a lot faster than Red Hat. Red Hat's been growing too because it?s a growing market."
Mr Ellison - let me take pleasure in calling your bluff on this. If RH code is buggy and you claim to have fixed it, did you put the fixes back out? The way you are reported to have spoken, implies that RH did not bother to fix anything and that Oracle was the saviour. Humbug. Your organization is not even able to fix a day 0 exploit!
Posted by anoy mouse, 15 Nov 2007
They are not yet equal
Since Oracle stands on Red Hat's giant shoulders, Oracle really doesn't have the presence to rival RH. Until Oracle contributes the amount of code RH does back to the kernel and/or other FOSS projects BEYOND their own, I personally see those "guns" as pellet guns versus RH's cannons. It'll take Oracle a lot of years to stand on their own in regards to having the same kind of Linux presence as RH.
I wouldn't blame them for trying as long as they are as generous with code as RH is. :)
Posted by TK, 15 Nov 2007