Oracle Corp. and Red Hat this week
joined forces to deliver a new version of Red Hat’s Linux operating system
optimized to meet the growing needs of e-business ventures.
This new version
will offer increased high availability, clustering and Java support, and is
thus intended to accelerate the adoption of Linux within e-business and
enterprise communities. Its planned release date is mid-December.
Oracle (ORCL) and Red Hat (RHAT) will jointly target small to midsize enterprises and Internet- commerce-focused companies and lines of business for Oracle8i and
this version of Red Hat Linux. They will co-sponsor TPCC benchmarks during the next three months, internally deploy the combined solutions and together market the availability of the products to enterprises users
worldwide.
To further enable this next-generation OS, Red Hat plans to partner with
various industry and Linux community leaders to deliver necessary e-business
features, such as large memory facilities, large file systems, ASynch I/O
and RAW device support. Red Hat will also integrate Java (JRE) and Motif 2.1
into its enhanced OS. Future features to be integrated include more advanced
e-business support (e.g., backward and forward database and OS
compatibility), a Linux journaling file system, a volume manager and support
for IA-64.
Red Hat Chief Operating Officer Tim Buckley described the partnership as one that will “bring
additional, enterprise-class solutions to our users.” He further noted, “Red
Hat and
Oracle are committed to ensuring optimal performance for Oracle on Red Hat
Linux.”
Earlier this year, Compaq Computer, IBM, Novell, and Oracle joined
Netscape Communications and Intel as minority stakeholders in Red Hat.
All changes to the Red Hat Linux OS will be available free under the GNU General Public License. Users can obtain the new version
through select channels, authorized Red Hat distributors and resellers, or
directly from Red Hat and RedHat.com.
