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Red Hat CEO suggests Oracle is feeling the heat
Rob writes "The previously rosy relationship between Oracle Corp and Red Hat Inc appears to have
soured following Red Hat's acquisition of JBoss Inc and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's
suggestion that his company could move into the Linux business. Red Hat's chief executive,
Matthew Szulik, has written in response to a recent interview with Ellison in which
Ellison suggested the company would be interested in distributing and supporting Linux.
"Is it possible that the dominant provider of databases feels pressure from its
long-time partner, Red Hat, because of our recent purchase of an open source middleware
company, JBoss?" Szulik asked, although
he also played down suggestions of a "showdown" between the two companies."
From the article:
"Oracle generates more interest income than Red Hat generates in annual revenues and Red Hat's planned acquisition has little to do with future strategies to enter an already commoditized database market,"
Funnypics
There is also a no-reg-required mirror at the zimbabwe open source software society.
The most intersting part of the letter is where szulik puts a new twist on the (always perfect) car / computer analogyWell put.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
It means that the price of the goods moves to the marginal cost of production. For open source software, that marginal cost of production is zero.
Oracle's biggest product is a high end database. As the performance of its open source competitors improves, that means there is less and less room for Oracle. In other words, Oracle gets chased up-market. Eventually it ceases to exist.
Will Larry fucking kill him? Has he done it before, and will he do it again?
Oracle could swallow Redhat without even needing a context switch.
And so the pissing contest begins. Why? Of what possible use is it? None. Look, Oracle wants in to the Linux market, so it can compete both within the open source arena and have a chance at digging into Microsoft's market share. I've said repeatedly this move is about 5 years overdue. Since it appears Oracle is not interested in Red Hat or Novell (I said appears; never let it be said Ellison couldn't change his mind in a heartbeat), they'll go after someone else, like Ubuntu. This doesn't stand to hurt Red Hat or Novell; any Linux distribution they swallow up is going to end up having its creativity choked off by the bloated development structure that is Oracle.
Move along -- nothing to care about here. We'll see how it pans out in the marketplace when and if Oracle takes the plunge. Sabre rattling at this point is just silly.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
I really don't think Redhat or Jboss has anything to do with Oracle or any pressure that might be put on them forcing change in their business. If anything, MySQL is largely responsible for this... When you have a database that a) is faster than Oracle and b) supports all the features of Oracle and c) can be clustered easier than Oracle and best of all d) it does not cost $200,000 per copy. I would be concerned too.. Their market share is fading away. I think Redhat is only referencing this to make themselves feel like part of the game, when in fact I'm not sure that they are even involved in any of this. Does Redhat write database server software? Not the last time I checked...
Certainly not most people who are using it.
"his company could move into the Linux business"
Uh, every company on the planet is 'moving into the Linux business'.*
* Except Microsoft and Apple(who wish this whole Linux silliness would just go away and people go back to paying a lot of money for their OSes)
The thing is, this affair of Oracle considering entering the Linux support arena and even shipping its own Linux distro is not new. Not even close.
It dates from 1998, during the initial launch of Oracle 8i. Since then, and arguably for even longer, Oracle has had a consistent strategy of undermining the role of the operating system by taking on more and more of the critical duties into its own code base. Linux plays into this strategy marvelously well. Except, here's the rub. Redhat is not interested in the furtherance of this agenda. Redhat wants the operating system to remain a key part of the enterprise IT infrastructure.
I wrote an interesting article on my blog titled "Oracle & Linux, Ancient History" on this subject last week, and the article links to the web archive of my original post about Oracle and Linux and Oracle's strategy to undermine the OS from 1998. The original article's title was "Why Oracle 8i Will Remodel the OS Landscape" and ultimately what we're seeing now in the tension between Oracle and Redhat is the materialization of Oracle's vision of the operating systems' role chafing on its longstanding partner.
Cheers,
Paul
P.S. Pythian DBAs post on our group blog at http://www.pythian.com/blogs/.
The real Paul Vallee is slashdot userid 2192, and, what do you mean it's not cool to point out your low userid?
It would make a lot of sense for Oracle to produce a complete dedicated package that didn't require an OS already be installed. Most Oracle database systems are dedicated machines anyway, so having the entire package supported by a single vendor instead does make a lot of sense. No more Database vendor blaming the OS vendor :)
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
These words sound like Red Hat is desperate to pull a SCO...
But that can't be... I hope...
You know, JBoss is still an open source and free (LGPL'd) just like innoDB. So you could still use it in your Oracle product.
Now, that's a consultant fee. Send me my check to my address.
Yours truely screwed by Oracle consultants,
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
It is common now for everyone and their matter to comment on other people's affairs? And how exactly is this slashdot-newsworthy?
Nothing really was interesting. Looks like some kind of artifical playup from the "news magazines" - RedHat VS Oracle, round 1, or some shit.
In china a sack of rice was dropped from a truck; all of them 123.665 rice corns survived.
supports all the features of Oracle
:p
Dude, I haven't laughed that much in months! Good joke
Or perhaps you're yet another one of those MySQL fanboys that drank a little too much of their koolaid. You badly need a reality check. (whoever modded that up insightful clearly doesn't know better either)
a) NOT so! MySQL might be faster for apps where there are few writes and that the queries are simple and the load not huge. But as your queries get more complex (and get tuned by qualified people), running on serious hardware and such, real DBs just slaughter MySQL in terms of execution speed (be it Oracle, Sybase, MS SQL, PostgreSQL or DB2). That's a typical ignorant MySQL fanboy argument, which only shows how little you know about DBs in general.
b) That's like the most ridiculous statement I've heard this year. MySQL is *NOWHERE NEAR* serious DBs (like those mentionned in point a). Not even a blip on the radar. Unless you meant features like "don't throw errors, just accept invalid data and mangle it"? Then indeed it might even be leading. That and some of the worst proprietary SQL usef by any DB.
c) How cares? If installing windows is easier than linux (I'm not saying it is), does that make it a better OS or something? Didn't think so either. The places that need clustering usually have tons of data (and can't tolerate MySQL mangling it) and are big places that can afford to hire a consultant to make it happen if they wanted to or lack the experience or whatever. And MySQL's "clustering" hardly deserves to even be called that, i mean, the whole thing's gotta fit in memory! (well, I guess I gotta get myself some motherboards that'll take hundreds of GBs of RAM!) It's a monumental joke.
d) Yes, Oracle is expensive, BUT, in some cases it's the only thing that'll work, or the price is just not much of a consideration, or it'll end up being cheaper despite the large licensing fees as it'll perform better or such (licensing fee is only a small part of the TCO figures or performance/price ratios). And there are more alternatives than just Oracle or MySQL (again, DB2, MS SQL, Sybase, etc). Quite frankly, MySQL is one of the DBs I'd pick last for most projects I've worked onto.
Oracle's market is somewhat fading away, as OSS and free DBs are catching up slowly, and some people realize they don't need Oracle's best and can get by with something cheaper. But MySQL isn't the answer to everything/as good as Oracle/isn't perfect/whatever. I don't know what will happen in the future (about InnoDB), but they still have a looooooooooooong way to go to be a real "corp grade" DB. Their future seems rather uncertain...
And RedHat isn't involved in DB servers, but they are getting involved in app servers, and Oracle already is - that's what they're not liking much (even mentionned in the summary)
Already last fall, one might theorize that Oracle Corp. had decided it had been feeding Linux enough, and that it should start watering some other ecosystems:
Oracle Selects Solaris as preferred OS
The amazing breakthrough with japanese cars in the US came about from an industry practice known as dumping. They sold very well engineered cars and trucks below the cost of production for several years. They were bargains. They worked well and got good mileage, grabbed some customer loyalty and mindshare, because they were right there when the opec embargomade high mileage a priority over large horsepower.. So we'll never know if they would have been as successful if they had been priced to try and turn a profit from the beginning. This is similar to when the hybrids first came out, they were selling below cost. The japanese were pretty smart in that regard. they also make US makers jump through a LOT more hoops trying to get their products into japan, for a long time it worked out to close to a 100% tariff.
None of that negates both US car company management and labor both constantly shooting themselves in the foot, but it is a prime factor in the consideration of how the market got altered.
Oracle wants an OS that runs on commodity (x86) hardware, so that it can publish a virtual machine with Oracle preconfigured. (Reference the Oracle appliance of days of yore.)
Why?
Because virtualization is hot in databases. Having lots of servers spinning idle that you may need (and paying Oracle for the privilege) is costly, and Larry sees market share, well, if not eroding, then certainly being nibbled at. By shipping a distro with Oracle preconfigured, he:
1. Shows a commitment to his customers for a lower TCO. (Remember, the amount of time the IT staff spends installing and working through issues with the software stack counts.)
2. Punches SQL Server in the mouth.
3. Takes more control of his destiny by being able to more effectively tune the OS for database tasks, yielding better performance and price-performance in things like TPC-C and TPC-H.
Oracle needs to use a Linux distro that has traction within the data center, and in the US, that's either Novell (SuSE) or Red Hat. Those are the only distros officially supported by Oracle now, which probably helps to explain their traction within the data center.
Oracle will buy one. It's just a matter of which one.
And if I were RedHat's CEO, I'd be really careful pissing off Larry. It's not like Larry's afraid to, I don't know, buy your company so he can fire your ass. *cough*Siebel*cough*
Impossible. Google handles unstructured data, Oracle handles structured relational data. These are two separate areas and, while in some applications they will appear to compete, a further, more expert examination will reveal that only one is appropriate for a given application. In some cases, both will be used.
Oracle's primary FOSS competitor is PostGreSQL, which has many, if not most, of the features you list for Oracle.
If we could not run Oracle on Redhat(=no support), we would rather choose another OS. The decision to drop Oracle would not be based on OS. All Red Hat are doing are making it more difficult to get Linux inside.
Now luckily it does not matter much to me because we use SUSE for webservers, databases, SAP etc.
Redhat v Oracle is like a lemonade stand against Jane Bryant and the Florida citrus growers.
As long as they are backing restrictive IP legislation, Red Hat do not have my support in any form.
The implication is that most apps that use relational databases don't need them.
"Their market share is fading away."
Firstly, that's just not true by any stretch of the imagination. Oracle makes more money than RedHat's , Boss, or MySQL's combined annual revenue in a matter of HOURS.
Let's also recognize that "market" implies economic exchange. Share of market is $revenue$, not merely downloads or usage. If everyone runs an unsupported copy of MySQL, it doesn't really hurt Oracle too much in the short run, as there's no money to be made there, and it's not Oracle's target market. It hurts them in the long run due to a shrinkage of the market due to commoditization.
Having said this, a Relational Database is much, much more complex than an operating system, and it's going to be at least another decade before it's close to commodity / unsupported status.
Open source's advantage is not in eating market share (which would take around 20 years, at best). It's in shrinking the size of the market by eliminating license revenue, and reyling mostly on marketing (not a salesforce) to drive subscription revenue. It's unclear if that's a sustainable business model, but it's the one that most vendors seem to be adopting (MySQL, JBoss, RedHat, etc.)
-Stu