Dell CIO Says "Unix is Dead"

An anonymous reader writes "I thought this might spur some good discussion on this board, including jabs at Dell and MS, which I always enjoy reading. Dell's CIO believes that the end of Unix is here, in fact his opening slide in a recent presentation was "Unix is dead." Specifically, he talked about the savings he claims in moving Dell's Oracle databases from Solaris to Red Hat.

Comments

Re:Disruptive technologies and Dell

[llywrch]

> Dell can't stay loyal to Microsoft and not go down with them.

Maybe, but every Dell employee is more interested in keeping his employer in business than sucking up to Microsoft; they make nice to MS only because Dell's bottom line depends on good terms with Bill & Co. While even now it's still not crystal clear that Linux has the momentum to take over the server space (although I would say it's only a matter of time before it does), they have to watch what they say for fear of pissing off Redmond. So I'd guess right now Dell is making all sorts of cooing noises to their contacts at Microsoft, while preparing behind the scenes for a possible Linux win in the server space. Once that happens, they'll be able to shrug & say ``But we have to sell what the market wants to buy" & begin the inevitable migration from their dependency on Windows, perhaps even making a serious effort to sell Linux desktops.

Then it will be just a question of how quickly Dell can reposition itself to join the Linux seachange. Without a lot of research, I wouldn't bet that Dell can't do it -- nor would I bet that they can.

Geoff