Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Oracle's Infrastructure Now Fully Linux-ized

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the more-linux-than-considered-decent dept.

mbadolato writes "An article over at InformationWeek reports Oracle is aggressively adopting Linux both internally and for its products, despite SCO Group's threats earlier this week that it may sue those who don't pay licensing fees to the company. Chuck Rozwat, an Oracle executive VP, says the company has moved its IT infrastructure to Linux, a year after CEO Larry Ellis issued the mandate. In the coming year, Oracle will move its base development platform to Linux, including putting the open-source operating system on the workstations of 8,000 developers"

22 of 273 comments (clear)

  1. Nice by TheQuantumShift · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A big giant company, openly using linux even with sco's perfectly logical (from a corporate america standpoint) litigation. A big giant company that other big giant companies buy from. This is what I like to see. And by the time I finish this post it will nolonger be first. I'll be lucky to break the top 50 by the end of this sentence...

    --

    Shift happens. Fire it up.
  2. SCO is no real threat by The+No+Vlad+Zone · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This move should prove to everyone that SCO's claims are complete BS. If a company with the resources like Oracle isn't bothered by their threats then we can assume that their lawyers told them that SCO's claims are baseless. Oracle's products are the mainstay of the database industry and moving to Linux shows that Microsoft does not in fact have a monopoly. If more Linux desktops are deployed Microsoft will become just another software company competing with all the others.

    --

    Enter The No Vlad Zone 1-877-9-NO-VLAD
    1. Re:SCO is no real threat by buffer-overflowed · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Maybe they're taking a calculated risk. They could strongly suspect the claims are baseless, and even if they aren't it's not going to be resolved for a good 2-5 years.

      When it is resolved, if SCO does win(and survives bleeding cash from legal fees), the infringing code will be removed and they're fine anyway. If the infringing code can't be removed [unlikely], then they're banking on Linux being a serious competitor around then anyway and worth the liscensing fees circa 2007.

      I'd say it's a pretty safe bet.

      --
      The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
    2. Re:SCO is no real threat by tshak · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If a company with the resources like Oracle isn't bothered by their threats then we can assume that their lawyers told them that SCO's claims are baseless.

      No, it's because they have those resources to pay the licensing fees should the need arise.

      --

      There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
  3. They should move to OS X instead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    After all, Larry Ellison is an Apple board member.

    Or maybe at least Darwin.

  4. What'd they have before? by groove10 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The article doesn't say what they were runnign before this switch. My hunch is that it was Solaris.

    I get the feeling that most large desktop migrations happen from commercial UNIX to linux rather than from Windows to linux. That transition would seem much more difficult and costly.

    Also are they using a distribution or are they "rolling their own"?

    --
    MMORPG fan-boy? Prove your worth
    1. Re:What'd they have before? by n3rd · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I get the feeling that most large desktop migrations happen from commercial UNIX to linux rather than from Windows to linux.

      Actually Ellison (like McNealy) is a well know Microsoft hater. Althought Linux is one of the best developement environments available I wouldn't be suprised if the decision to swith to Linux was partially out of spite for Microsoft.

    2. Re:What'd they have before? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I'm posting anonymously because I work for the company in question.

      The major platform for development was Solaris (and still is at the current time for me and my group). There have been various projects ongoing for awhile now to migrate the development to be Linux based.
      And to address the specific question about migrating from Solaris to Linux (not from Windows), there was a plan being deployed in various groups to change the development environment before the Linux plan. The earlier one was to move to small cheap Windows workstations as 'thin' (ha!) clients to rack Solaris machines.

      So, the Linux-based plan still shows a large loss of potential Windows licenses (for all the MS-bashers out there).

    3. Re:What'd they have before? by Johnny+Mnemonic · · Score: 2, Interesting


      Don't make the assumption that everybody at Oracle is a code writer... there are LOTS, and I mean LOTS, of non-technical people working there. Just because it's a software company doesn't mean that every, or even most, employees are technical.

      I understand that; I would agree that only a sizable minority of the employees are technically inclined. I should have said so in my previous post.

      That's about as much of a non-technical workforce as you can get in modern business, even though they may have technical components

      However, I don't see that as being true. You don't think that Geico has less technical knowledge in it's corporate culture than does Oracle? Or even Ford? I think so, and I think one of those conversions would be much more interesting, and relevant, to more corporations. When Munich gets deployed, and feedback comes in, is when Linux proponents will know how likely Penguin World Domination really is.

      --

      --
      $tar -xvf .sig.tar
    4. Re:What'd they have before? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Also posting anonymously because I work for Oracle

      Probably a fair bit of Sun gear has been involved, but I do know that the servers our internal E-Business suite used to run on were HP/UX.

      Also, we no longer have any NT file servers - all been migrated to Oracle Files Online running on Linux.

      As far a distributions are concerned, pretty much anytime anyone talks about linux here it is RedHat Advanced Server 2.1. Remember - we are talking about servers here. We have a pretty strong relationship with RH, and I can't see us 'rolling our own'. We're a database company. (of course that hasn't stopped us before.)

      Just wish they would support us 'early adopters' running our non-existant* linux desktops better - in terms of 'well, it works on Windows/IE so you should be using that'

      *well, according to all the 'anal-ysts' they don't exist

    5. Re:What'd they have before? by afidel · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I doubt it Geicko is probably like most insurance companies, they probably have a very large developer base. I can't speak to Geicko specifically but Progressive is based near me and I know several people who work there. The reason Progressive is so tech focused is that they don't really sell insurance. Insurance is just a way to get volumes of dollars in house to build up their float. In most markets the amount of profit an insurance company can make per person is fairly tightly regulated, and Progressive will often be below even this level, because they want to build up volume. The services of actually offering and distributing on the insurance is just costs, which is why they try to minimize these operations through technology. It might seem to the consumer that the fast claims process is there for them but it is really there to minimize the number of claims adjusters they need in any given area. They also have their strong web presence which is convenient for customers and cheap for them to process. Minimizing these costs allows them to maxamize the profit from the return on their float. Other than developers their largest employment area is probably call centers, for those users it doesn't matter what they run, it's probably just an interface to a black screen app or a modern GUI on front of a similar backend, which can easily be developed for Linux, for the remaining part of the staff (adjusters, actuaries and admin staff), they will simply have training costs, probably not significant compared to the savings achievable on the whole enterprise, or they can leave those personell on Windows.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  5. Who needs MS Products? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Slowly.. Windows is fading away in this town, 4 shops in this town of 75,000 near Waterloo, Ontario are pushing Linux hard and 2 just teamed with Oracle for there Group/Cal Software.

  6. Oracle in Austin, TX by Yiliar · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I went for an interview at Oracle in Austin. Being a SUNOS/Solaris person for over 15 years, it was an eye opener to see the Austin facility was nearly 100% Linux.

    When I suggested at the beginning of the interview that a person would have to be crazy to want to administer 8,000 diskless Linux servers tied to NetApps storage, the interview prompty ended. :)

    My conclusion, however, was that Oracle is indeed committed to Linux. In fact they are betting the company on it.

  7. QANTAS, Linux, Sun, Oracle and MS by thelandp · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I work at QANTAS (Australia's largest Airline), and we're using Oracle alot, but not using Linux anywhere - we are basically a Solaris shop. The next major changes to our software infrastructure involve commiting more fully to Oracle. That may involve switching to Linux for servers, but probably not for desktops - they will stay as Win NT 4.0.

    Now, I think Linux is technically great, and I hate the business practices of Microsoft. However, experience at QANTAS says that for us, Linux is not really any threat to Microsoft, it is much more dangerous to Sun. If we switch over to Linux here, we'll be doing Sun out of business, and Microsoft is unscathed. How is that good for the world?

    Adoption of Linux on the desktop is a much bigger threat to Microsoft, and much harder to achieve because of inertia.

    --

    -- the only thing we have to fear is really scary things
  8. Re:Ellis? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Larry Ellis

    Track and field coach for the U.S. men's team at the 1984 Olympics and past president of USA Track & Field; coached 1968 Olympic long jump champion Bob Beamon; spent 13 years coaching at Jamaica HS in Queens, N.Y. and 22 years at Princeton; NCAA All-American runner at New York University; elected USTAF president in 1992 and held the position until 1996.

  9. Re:8000 developers? by mikewolf · · Score: 1, Interesting

    hey, i have worked with SQL Server almost every day for the past 3 years, and while it is easy to use, i would gladly go back to using Oracle in a heartbeat, on windows, unix, linux, whatever... it is just better!

  10. Watching the games of .... by 3seas · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Seems to me that corporate is playing ping pong with Linux....

  11. More info by mbadolato · · Score: 4, Interesting
    There's another article here which offers a little more information, including the following, regarding PHP support:

    Rozwat also provided new details on the launch of the Oracle Open Source Development Center -- an online service available through Oracle's online developer network, OTN. The new service will provide developers with software, sample code and extensive tutorials, free-of-charge. Additionally, the company has extended its support for scripting language PHP, including full integration and shipping with Oracle 9i Application Server.

    "It is our goal to be a value-add to the developer community," added Rozwat. "With the development of the OSDC and our extended support of PHP, we continue to invest in the Linux development community. This will be an ongoing priority for us." Rozwat also noted that there have been more than 1 million downloads of Oracle software for Linux, illustrating the extensive, growing use of Oracle together with Linux.

  12. Oracle not all that serious about Linux desktops by dcavanaugh · · Score: 2, Interesting

    At my company, we run Oracle Financials. We use a stupid little Windows app called jinitiator to launch the "javatized" version of Oracle Forms. Unfortunately, Oracle refuses to release a Linux version of jinitiator, despite what is probably hundreds of requests/complaints on Metalink and thousands more that really want the product. Java is supposed to mean platform independence, but somehow we get stuck with Windows anyway. All this rhetoric about Oracle supporting Linux is great, but the action is another story.

  13. Oracle's database developers reaction? by christophersaul · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Solaris has been the development platform for the database for a long time. Solaris/Sparc still offer a lot of things Linux can't in technical terms and Oracle RAC, a cornerstone of Oracle sales reps' comp plans runs extremely well on Sun.

    Changing the base development platform is a big move.

    The Linux decision seems mainly to be a strategic business move driven from the top.

    I'd be very interested to know how Oracle's developers feel towards the Linux move. They're the guys who really know the technical advantages between the various platforms Oracle runs on.

  14. So Larry Ellison is the new Hero??? by btakita · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hmm,

    Here's Larry Ellison. He told us he wants to buy out People Soft and lay off a bunch of people.
    But, He's the hero because he likes Linux (more like he hates Microsoft and will use anything to make him top DAWG).

    And then look at the "evil" Bill Gates.
    He donated $15 Billion to charity and has plans to employ 5000 people.

    Yes, I'm happy that Linux is being widely used, but Is it fair to create such a dichotomy of Good and Evil??

    Will we demonize Bill Gates and trumpet Larry Ellison as a hero? Aren't they the at least the same breed?

    And then, are we any better than Bill Gates? All the "wonderful" things we "would" do if we had his money.

    I hate to throw religion into this, but don't judge your neighbor for having a speck in his eye when you have a plank in your own.

  15. Oracle is serious about linux desktops by Ur@eus · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Hi,
    The latest releases of 11i ERP do support running Oracle applications clients out of the box with the standard Sun java plugin under Linux. The certification process isn't done yet however, but we are working on it, so hopefully support for Linux and Solaris clients can be officially announced soon.