Oracle’s mega-deal to snap up trouble Sun Microsystems has raised a slew of questions. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison took a few minutes to speak to one of those concerns — namely, how will Oracle handle Solaris and Linux?
Ellison doesn’t see it as a zero-sum game. Server Watch has the story on the future of Solaris and Linux after Oracle digests its latest acquisition.
Several of the concerns about Oracle’s acquisition of Sun have revolved around how Unix technologies led by Sun would continue under the new ownership. As it turns out, Solaris users might not have much to worry about, as Oracle executives on Wednesday affirmed their commitment to preserving the efforts.
In the case of Solaris, Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) had already been a big supporter of the rival Linux operating system. Oracle has its own Enterprise Linux offering, based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. For Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, the idea that Linux and Solaris are mutually exclusive is a false choice.
“I don’t think it’s an either/or proposition, as UNIX does very well on the high-end,” Ellison said during a Webcast Q&A session about the technologies. “I think where you’ll see Solaris going is running not so much as an operating system for a standalone computer. You’ll see Solaris as an operating system for a cluster of computers.”
Under Sun, the OpenSolaris open source effort can be used on standalone computers. It also represents the next generation of Solaris as a testbed for future technologies. Though Ellison did not specifically mention OpenSolaris during his talk, he did address how Linux will fit into the equation.