Oracle Linux customers: Finally they’re talking (UPDATED)

Oracle today announced a range of customers that have signed up for Oracle Linux. It’s an impressive list.

How much money changed hands is not known, and won’t be. In fact, it’s completely unclear from the language used in the press release that anyone is actually using Oracle Linux at all. They’re paying Oracle for support, but are they paying Oracle support on top of Red Hat support? Or are they using Red Hat’s software and simply paying Red Hat to support it? (This is another way of saying that they’d be paying both for Red Hat Enterprise Linux/support and Oracle support on top of that.)

In short, it’s not clear to me anymore in re-reading it that anyone is actually swapping out Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Oracle’s Unbreakable Linux at all. Read a few of these glowing quotes:

“We at IHOP see tremendous value in the enterprise-quality, lower cost support delivered by Oracle’s Unbreakable Linux program,” said Patrick Piccininno, CIO, IHOP. “Oracle provides the responsive support we need to deploy and maintain Linux-based solutions, and the switch from Red Hat support couldn’t have been easier.”

“At Timex, we are excited to take advantage of the opportunity the Oracle Linux support alliance offers,” said Archana Deskus, CIO, Timex. “With the Oracle Unbreakable Linux offering, we are now able to rely on one partner to meet the Linux and Oracle support requirements, greatly increasing our efficiency and reducing our costs.”

“At Diebold, we run Oracle Business Intelligence on Linux, supported with Oracle Unbreakable Linux Support,” said Sean Forrester, Vice President, Information Technology, Diebold. “We take advantage of Oracle’s global support organization, giving us access to the comprehensive, integrated, enterprise-quality support we demand.”

See what I mean? The phrasing certainly seems to point to continued use of RHEL, while supplementing it with Oracle.

I’m willing to bet Red Hat hardly loses a dime in this. It’s great if Oracle gains a few, but I don’t think this is a win for Oracle against Red Hat.

If any of these customers are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I’m guessing they’re going to keep doing so, just as Yahoo! is. In fact, Red Hat confirmed today (March 29) that Yahoo! is as committed to Red Hat as ever. Maybe more so.

Same thing as when Novell announced its Microsoft customers, some or all of them got screaming deals on the software to induce them to announce for SUSE, and none of them dropped their Red Hat installations.) So, it’s not as if Oracle’s gain is necessarily Red Hat’s (or Novell’s, in case these were SUSE customers) loss.

But it’s still an impressive list:

Yahoo!, IHOP, Timex, Diebold, GlobeCast, ABC Stores, Stuart Maue, Replacements, Ltd., Mutual Materials and Hays Medical Center, BNP Paribas, Raley’s, Powell Industries, Columbia Forest Products, Deseret Power, Fulcrum Analytics, New York State Insurance Department, The Cobalt Group, Stemilt Growers, The Gem Group, Stanford University, Vcommerce, Knife River Corporation, Primavera Systems, Centre de Services Partages du Quebec, and Spaulding Equipment Company.

I still don’t understand why, other than out of spite, Oracle doesn’t simply adopt Ubuntu and run with that, but perhaps it’s the same reason that we used to start with Red Hat Linux back in my Lineo days (as did every other embedded Linux vendor of which I’m aware) – it was just easier to start with what was perceived to be the best.

Anyway, it’s good to see Linux thriving, even if Oracle feels it needs to do so at Red Hat’s expense. I’m assuming the world is big enough for both, especially if Linux sales start to cut into Windows’ growth. So far, that hasn’t happened. If Oracle can drive Linux into Windows shops, I’m all for that.