Qantas proves that time travel is possible

Who knew? I always thought those children’s fantasies about going back in time were…fantasies. But in a surprise move announced today, Qantas Airlines has revealed that it has decided to turn back the clock on industry momentum and replace Linux with AIX. I’m sure even IBM isn’t super-proud of the announcement, though of course it still has a warm spot in its heart for AIX.

“We’re moving from a Linux platform to an IBM AIX environment. We did that to address some stability issues we were having,” said Suzanne Young, the airline’s group general manager for finance improvement and segmentation. The decision was made last year as part of the planning for eQ, a Qantas initiative designed to improve the company’s technical and management operations.

I know nothing about Qantas’ IT setup, but it does seem strange that it should have the exact opposite experience of, say, 99.9999999999999999999999999999999% of the rest of the industry. A nimble architecture? No way! Give us big iron and big price!!!

Seriously, I’m exaggerating, because Qantas surely wouldn’t have made the decision if it weren’t in its best interests.

But hark! What light from yonder window breaks? This should have been an Oracle Unbreakable Linux deal:

The new platform for the project will be based on Oracle’s 11i database and applications, Hyperion’s financial management and consolidation tools and a Teradata data warehouse.

Seriously, why didn’t Oracle get this deal instead of IBM’s AIX? This would hae been a perfect opportunity for OUL (Oracle Unbreakable Linux) to shine. I’m really surprised that this Oracle shop had to shop elsewhere….

But whatever. We’ll take the rest of the world’s enterprises that are moving to Linux, not away from it.