Larry Allison had already said in the Oracle OpenWorld Opening Keynote that the company had developed a new kernel for its Linux operating system, Oracle Linux, but it was up to Edward Screven, Oracle’s Chief Corporate Architect, to detail the strategy in this area, in with Executive Vice President John Fowler.
The message is not linear, with Oracle promising to maintain compatibility and support for the Red Hat Linux operating system, but to launch the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel, a new highly optimized kernel that the company ensures will ensure solution stability. Exadata and Exalogic midleware.
Criticisms of Red Hat had already been advanced by the founder of Oracle, who accused the company of being slow to evolve, maintaining an old kernel and needing modernization, and taking a long time to react to the needs of bug fixes that are emerging. These were the reasons that led the company to “dig up” the Oracle Linux project, which was initially launched four years ago and which is now reinforced with the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel.
Support for Red Hat Linux will continue but this is no longer the first Linux option on enterprise systems. In a comparative table Edward Screven proves the speed of this kernel compared to Red Hat, presenting gains of 75%. And the migration of customers is very simple, he guarantees.
Alongside the bet on Oracle Linux and the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel, Oracle will continue to invest in Solaris, which will have a new version available in 2011. Yesterday was presented the Solaris 11 Express, which should reach the hands of customers at the end of this year, allowing them to test the technology of the new system which contains more than 2,700 projects with more than 400 novelties that resulted from 20 million hours of development and more than 60 million hours of testing.
The new Solaris was built with new capabilities to develop and support cloud computing, being optimized for the scalability requirements that these systems will demand from companies.
