Oracle on Linux

By supporting Linux with Oracle's industry leading products, we are enabling customers to deploy enterprise-class solutions on the lowest cost hardware and operating system infrastructure.

We believe that Linux is more attractive today than it ever was, as customers are looking for open, cost effective solutions. Over the past few years Oracle and its customers have learned a tremendous amount about running Oracle on Linux for enterprise class deployments.

Combining this knowledge with the opportunity to drastically reduce IT infrastructure costs has provided the catalyst for Oracle to move to the next step, which is to provide Oracle customers with seamless and complete technical support for the Linux operating system in addition to support for the Oracle stack.

Oracle's delivery of a complete solution including direct technical support of the operating system is critical to our customer's success.

With technical contributions to enhance Linux, with code-level support of the key Linux operating systems, and with strategic partnerships, Oracle is offering an Unbreakable Linux platform for customers to safely deploy Linux in a mission critical environment.

All key Oracle products including Oracle Database 10g with Real Application Clusters, Oracle Application Server 10g, Oracle Collaboration Suite, Oracle Developer Suite 10g, and Oracle E-Business Suite are available for Linux.

Oracle Database on Linux is the same product as on Windows, UNIX, and any other platform on which Oracle Database is available. Oracle has been working with strategic partners such as Red Hat and Novell/SUSE to make further enhancements to the Linux kernel to support enterprise class functionality and enable the Linux operating system to effectively run mission critical applications.

But Oracle does not want to support fragmentation in the Linux operating system market. There are an indeterminate number of Linux distributions in the market. Customers have consistently asked for stability, better performance, and reliability of the Linux platform as well as enterprise-class support. Oracle cannot be effective in servicing customers if we attempt to support a large number of different Linux distributions.

Oracle does not have its own distribution of Linux. Oracle has determined that collaborating with partners such as Red Hat and Novell/SUSE is the best way to create a stable and supportable enterprise class Linux distribution. Oracle is committed to working with the Linux community to enhance the Linux kernel. We work with the partners and the Linux community to add new functionality to the kernel that is important to run mission-critical applications.

In an effort to streamline and lower the cost of our operations, Oracle has deployed Linux in various ways to make our infrastructure more efficient and less expensive. Oracle's internal IT organization has analyzed and found that Linux based systems are one of the most cost effective ways to reduce costs for IT infrastructure. We have a large number of Linux based pilots and operational systems in use at Oracle today. In fact, all of Oracle's recently deployed and new outsourcing business runs on Linux.

We run our Application Demo Systems and Technology Demo Systems, which consist of several hundred servers, on Linux. These systems are utilized by Oracle's worldwide sales organization to provide Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle Database with RAC demonstrations to customers and prospects.

In addition, several for our Global IT systems are now running on Linux. In October 2003, over 5,000 Oracle developers migrated over to use Linux as the platform on which we build the Oracle E-Business Suite product.