By Rachel Chalmers
Oracle Corp and Red Hat Inc have planned a new version of Red Hat Linux optimized to support Oracle’s Internet Platform Specifications. Red Hat will find the necessary partners to add large memory facilities, large file system, Asynch I/O and RAW Device support to Linux. Java and Motif 2.1 are to be integrated with the new OS, and future plans include backward and forward database and OS compatibility, a journaling file system, a volume manager and support for IA-64. It’s worth noting that several of these features – most notably IA-64 support and the journaling file system – are already slated for inclusion in version 2.4 of the Linux kernel, so Red Hat won’t have to work too hard to come up with those. All changes to Red Hat Linux will be released under the GNU General Pubic License (GPL) to benefit the entire user community.
The point is that while Red Hat insists its Linux distribution is enterprise-ready, there’s enterprise-ready and then there’s enterprise-ready. Red Hat needs the industrial-strength credibility that optimization for Oracle applications can provide. An introduction to Oracle’s user base, which includes most of the Fortune 1000 and the leading dot coms, will also confer great benefit on Red Hat the enterprise debutante. As for Oracle, executives say customers have been clamoring for Linux, if only as a stick with which to beat Sun Microsystems Inc and the Hewlett-Packard Co. The same executives insist that this deal has nothing to do with an announcement Informix Corp signed earlier this week.
If you look very closely at the Informix press release, there’s no Red Hat support and no Red Hat executive quoted, Oracle’s Raymond Wong told ComputerWire. What Informix has done is joined Red Hat’s ISV program. The partnership between Oracle and Red Hat is much more wide-ranging, and besides, Wong says he doesn’t consider Informix a competitor: Oracle is not just a database but a total infrastructure play. That said, you have to wonder why someone who didn’t consider Informix a competitor would be reading their press releases so closely.
Wong doesn’t actually come out and say that he doesn’t consider Linux ready for prime time, but he certainly implies it. He says Oracle will help Linux in: those areas Red Hat and really all the Linux distributors have not had any experience in. What they’re bringing is the Linux distribution and branding. Oracle, he says, is looking for: More reliability, more scalability, more tightly integrated components, more compatibility, volume managers and different types of I/O – an entire package. If you went to Sun or HP today you would get that. To get same set of features from Linux is very difficult. To that end, Oracle will give Red Hat access to Oracle’s specifications and requirements. They’ll want to adopt those specifications to make a platform that is tailored more to Oracle. Essentially, Oracle is granting Red Hat the favor of access to its list of demands. It may sound arrogant, but when you’re the second biggest software company in the world, you can afford to be arrogant. á
