Oracle partners put weight behind Unbreakable Linux

The database vendor has won the backing of a host of high-profile companies

Oracle has won the backing of high-profile vendors for its Unbreakable Linux support program, with EMC, NetApp, HP, IBM and HDS all certifying the database vendor's Enterprise Linux implementation on their platforms and applications.

By offering a similar version of the open-source Linux operating system, Oracle is trying to tempt customers away from market leader Red Hat with, it claims, better support for the OS and lower costs.

Monica Kumar, Oracle senior director of Linux and open-source product marketing, said the Unbreakable Linux programme has gone well in the first three months of its operation. But she conceded that the customers migrating from Red Hat support were mostly those running other Oracle applications already, and few were dropping Red Hat altogether.

“Large companies are not going to drop everything overnight, but they are switching their mission-critical environments, particularly databases, to Oracle Unbreakable Linux,” Kumar said. “Most of those customers have used Oracle in some way, but some are also using Oracle support for non-Oracle product environments that may be running third party applications.”

EMC has been an Oracle partner for years. The storage specialist believes that pre-validating its Linux implementation for use with its products, backed by a joint support initiative from both companies, can help eliminate risk and reduce end user implementation time.

“As customers deploy enterprise applications on Oracle Enterprise Linux they want confidence that all their infrastructure components have been tested and qualified,” EMC’s vice president of technology alliances, Chuck Hollis, said in a statement.