Can Oracle support an operating system?
In the flurry of activity covering the news that Oracle is entering the Linux support and services business, this note from a Forbes article is one of the most overlooked:
Then again, there is no guarantee that Oracle will prevail over its much smaller open source competitor. Red Hat has a great reputation with customers. A recent CIO Insight Research Study ranked Red Hat No. 1 for “vendor value”. Oracle ranked 39 out of 41 overall, 40th in the category “meets expectations for lowering costs.”
While Linux has proven that it's mature enough as a product to have earned a place in the enterprise datacenter, whether a database company can do more than just make enhancements to improve their own products' compatibility is unknown.
I once got a quote from Red Hat to support a high volume Postfix MTA environment. Will Oracle be able to offer that type of service, where an Oracle database is not involved?
