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.”