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Oracle and Red Hat begin battle for the Enterprise
Salvance writes "Yahoo News (via ComputerWire) is reporting that Oracle and Red Hat are turning up the heat in the battle over Oracle's new enterprise Linux offering. While Oracle claims they'll be able to offer their 'Unbreakable' version of Red Hat's Linux offering for half the price, Red Hat asserts that all the important security and hardware certifications would be invalidated on Oracle's offering.
At this point, the only thing that's certain is that Red Hat needs to figure out how to keep their large Oracle Enterprise clients on board or risk becoming a takeover target (undoubtably, with Oracle leading the list of potentially bidders)."
At this point, the only thing that's certain is that Red Hat needs to figure out how to keep their large Oracle Enterprise clients on board or risk becoming a takeover target (undoubtably, with Oracle leading the list of potentially bidders)."
I'm not so sure the real value is in the software. People and, especially, companies seem to be willing to pay more for support contracts than for software. They'll even take inferior software over superior software if they can get a support contract that way.
I own a small-ish business. In no way, shape, or form, is support more important to me than quality software. If I have to make support calls, that's lost time and money. The second software malfunctions, is the second you start losing money. No question about it. I will pay multiples more for a product that requires little to no support, than I will for a product that has good support.
The only reason a product needs support is because it's not good enough to be used without support. So by definition, a better product requires less support than a product (that does the same thing) that requires support. There's no value in support. Support is purely a cost, and an avoidable one at that.
In the case of somebody like Red Hat, there's simply no way I'd ever use the product (at least for our desktops... our server stuff is outsourced). I don't care if I can get a literate, English speaking person on the phone instantly 24/7 via a toll-free number. I don't care if the company will teleport a support person to my company within one minute of needing help. That's not nearly as good as using a product that doesn't require support.