SAP, Oracle Holding Out on Ubuntu? - Page 2

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SAP holds its line

SAP, however, does not have its own flavor of Linux. It, too, does not currently support Ubuntu.

"SAP is certified to run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server," Michael Bechauf, vice president of industry standards at SAP, told InternetNews.com. "At this time we are responding to customer demands in the enterprise space, and will determine our support strategy accordingly."

Though Oracle and SAP are not currently supporters of Ubuntu, IBM, a mainstay in enterprise software, has supported Ubuntu since 2005. IBM's support, however, is not across the board and was originally just a certification for the DB2 database product. Last week, IBM's partnership with Canonical expanded to include IBM Lotus Symphony as part of the joint Microsoft-Free PC effort.

The partnership that IBM has with Ubuntu, however, is not at the same level that IBM has with Red Hat and Novell.

"Our work with Ubuntu is focused on areas where Ubuntu is getting traction," Inna Kuznetsova, director of Linux at IBM, told InternetNews.com. "As for other areas, we'll explore them as they come up. Our Red Hat and Novell relationships are very robust and include all IBM server lines and support for a huge number of IBM middleware products."

Enterprise content management vendor Alfresco, however, is seeing increasing usage of Ubuntu for deployment. In its recent Open Source Barometer study, the company reported that 23 percent of its users were on Ubuntu as compared with 35 percent for users on Red Hat distributions of Linux.

In terms of getting wider acceptance for Ubuntu, Canonical's Yates is clear about what needs to be done.

Canonical is continuing to work on getting OEMs to preload Ubuntu and is continuing to build a system of partners. It offers Ubuntu as a preload on Dell PCs, and Best Buy stores sell Ubuntu on their shelves.

"It's all about certification and the ecosystem, and it's what we've been working toward," Yates said. "Having partners and applications available are key. It's the applications, and it's always been about the applications."

Though Oracle and SAP don't currently support Ubuntu, plenty of other vendors do.

"There are lots and lots of opportunities out there," Yates said. "We're still growing as a company."