Michael Dolan Dot Com

Sunday, April 30th, 2006

Larry Ellison: Denying Purchase Orders Unless They’re Linux

Apparently Larry really is just another huge Linux fan. ZDNet is running an interview with Oracle SVP Jesper Anderson that shows just how big of a fan Larry is. Oddly Sun was trumpeting that Solaris 10 x64 was a preferred Oracle operating system platform to help out his buddy Scott M. a few months back. Seems that was just some air cover to help out an old friend. Anyone with developer friends at Oracle also knows what platform Oracle does its primary development on.

Some of Jesper’s comments really showed Larry’s devotion to the Linux OS.

“When Larry felt that Linux was strong enough, and when we felt that Oracle applications ran as well as on Linux as on any other thing, Larry initially just demanded that every mid-tier server we run at Oracle, run Linux.

“I mean I’ve been in meetings with Larry where people walked in with purchase order requests for big Sun Solaris or HP-UX servers and Larry just looked at it and said ‘Nope, denied’.

“And then he turned around and said ‘it’s not the money, you come back to me with a purchase order, same amount or more for Linux, and I’ll approve it right away’,” Anderson said.

The Independent Oracle User Group study released recently showed Oracle’s user base is also migrating to Linux even without Larry’s push.

Jesper’s comments seem to suggest a much bigger battle brewing in the IT industry’s never ending game of vendor lockin and control for world domination. It remains to be seen whether Larry will buy the Queen Mary II or maybe invest in a Linux distro… or two.