If just a couple years ago we'd told you Microsoft had tasked its sales force with selling SUSE Linux Enterprise and agreed to refrain from suing Novell customers for patent infringement, you'd check to see if you were reading the April 1 issue. But not only is the Novell-Microsoft deal a reality, Oracle has made some bold statements about Unbreakable Linux. The OS for each app," says David Daniels, director of technology for Aleris International, a recycler and maker of aluminum products. And often, Linux has filled the bill. In 2005, Aleris consolidated about 30 patch them, they aren't affected by viruses, and they're secure. That translates to a lot of time we can spend on other things." Aleris still uses Windows for its Avocent IP KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) and Hyperion software, among other things, but Daniels says where there is a Linux alternative, he generally goes with it. "It typically is easier to deploy and allows us to run more services from different vendors on the same box," he says. Aleris receives SUSE Linux Enterprise Server as part of its Novell OES (Open Enterprise Server) maintenance, so there's no added cost for running SLES. Not everyone has that advantage: Our analysis shows that if you're buying Red Hat, SUSE Linux or even Ubuntu with support to save money over Microsoft Windows Server, you're in for a rude awakening (see "Three-Year Costs of an Application Server" in the image gallery ). We decided to bring four Linux distros into our Green Bay, Wis., Real-World Labs® to see whether enterprises can cut these costs. We examined two commercial variants, Novell SLES and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, along with Canonical's Ubuntu and Slackware, both freely distributed under the GPL (GNU public license), with an eye toward usability. We found that even companies without hard-core Linux pros can get out from under high mandatory support fees by adopting Ubuntu, which lives up to its slogan, "Linux for Human Beings" ... as opposed to the aforementioned command-line jockeys, perhaps.
And it's been good for competition: Since Ubuntu stormed the scene and claimed the top free distro spot, Novell and Red Hat have been forced to pick up the pace (see "Storming the Last Bastion"). The Borrowers In the open-source paradigm, code is written and tested by thousands of developers around the world, from hobbyists to those who work for companies like IBM, Novell and Red Hat. This code is available for everyone to use and modify, with the stipulation that you don't distribute it in binary-only form without also providing access to the source. All this open collaboration means Linux source code is run and tested on many different platforms as it's being developed. Then, it's further hardened when vendors like Red Hat and Novell prepare the software for their enterprise-class products. Now, with all this code in the open, what's to stop someone from taking someone else's product and rebranding it? Nothing. In fact, Oracle is doing exactly that to Red Hat Linux, and it plans to undercut Red Hat's support costs by more than half. With every Red Hat release, Oracle will download the code, remove all Red Hat trademarks and compile it. Oracle will also provide bug fixes for current and past releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This may sound like cheating on Oracle's part, but it's really true to the nature of open source. Look at it this way: Red Hat does contribute a lot of source code that everyone can take advantage of, but the company receives more benefit from other developers than it gives. In the end, choosing one vendor over another is based on which offers the amenities you need--if Red Hat's services are really worth what the company's charging, it has no need to worry. To that, Oracle's Monica Kumar, senior director of product marketing, told us that Oracle customers running Red Hat are not satisfied with the support they're receiving. "Problems range from delays in bug fixes to the inability to diagnose interoperability issues," Kumar says. When we asked Nick Carr, director of marketing for Red Hat, about Oracle's plans, he responded in true open-source fashion: "The question is, will it shrink or grow the open-source world? Clearly, it will grow the market." The winner here is the enterprise. Because Oracle products on Linux are a significant growth area, it makes good business sense for the company to make sure its Unbreakable Linux platform is truly unbreakable. And, with more than 9,000 Oracle developers busily developing Oracle Database, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle E-Business Suite products, the company clearly sees Linux as the platform of the future and has a lot of incentive to see it succeed.
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