Datamation: Who's Afraid of Linux? (Part 2)

Datamation concludes its look at ERP and Linux with an examination of Oracle's ambivalence toward Linux. While the company aggressively supports Oracle databases running on Linux, there's very little support for its ERP suite running on Linux -- to the point where Larry Ellison is advising customers not to run Oracle 11i on Linux.

"While Germany-based software company SAP is eager to trumpet its support for running business applications on Linux operating system, the other big player in the enterprise resource planning market, Oracle Corp., of Silicon Valley, seems more ambivalent about the open source movement."

"SAP released its first Linux version of its primary ERP software, R/3, as far back as late 1999. This February, in contrast, Oracle chief Larry Ellison cautioned users at Oracle's AppsWorld conference not to try to run Oracle's 11i application suite on Linux...."

"'Oracle did not support it one iota,' says Jeffrey Sofferin, CIO of Aviation Systems International Inc., in Boca Raton, Fla., a $40 million aviation parts distributor which tried -- and failed -- to run Oracle 11i on Linux a few months ago."

"When ASI received its copy of 11i for Linux, says Sofferin, Oracle had included disks for NT in the package. 'If they're serious about Linux, they have a funny way of showing it,' he says."

Complete Story

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