New Oracle 9i Release To Launch Wednesday

Oracle

Release 2 will sport enhancements to Oracle's Real Application Clustering (RAC) architecture, more integrated OLAP and better XML support, most of which Oracle has demonstrated in the past several months. Oracle also is working on file system middleware to expedite real application clusters running on Linux and Windows.

Early access versions of Release 2 for the Solaris, Windows 2000, HP-UX, Linux and AIX platforms have been available for download from the Oracle Technical Network (OTN) for three weeks, and Oracle said more than 11,000 people have downloaded copies so far.

Plans call for the Release 2 launch to occur at Oracle headquarters here as part of an event that was originally slated to unveil an expanded partnership between Oracle, Red Hat and Dell Computer. Dell Chairman Michael Dell and Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik are expected to be on hand along with Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison.

The three companies are expected to announce pre-certified, pre-configured systems running Oracle 9i on Red Hat Linux on Dell boxes. Oracle will also, for the first time, offer support for Red Hat Linux to customers through their standard support contracts, according to sources close to Oracle. Such support is not available for other operating systems. It is unclear whether Oracle will offer similar OS-level support to other Linux distributions, notably the new UnitedLinux effort backed by Caldera, SuSE, TurboLinux and Conectiva. UnitedLinux is seen as a bid by those companies to unseat Red Hat as the premier Linux distribution.

The announcement comes at a critical time for Oracle, which has been sullied by fallout from a huge licensing deal with the state of California. The $95 million contract came under fire when critics alleged that Logicon, an Oracle consultant that advised the state on its purchasing plans, recommended Oracle and then received a big piece of the contract. Such dealings violate California's conflict-of-interest statutes.

The disclosures, made by the state's auditor, caused a firestorm. Oracle scheduled a press conference call on the issue late Monday, but the call was canceled as analysts and others jammed the lines looking for guidance on the company's fourth-quarter earnings. Oracle's fourth quarter ended last Friday.

On Monday, Lehman Brothers analyst Neil Herman wrote in a research note that Oracle likely would implement significant layoffs within the next several weeks. His report didn't specify the potential size of staff reductions. An Oracle spokeswoman confirmed on Tuesday that the company had cut 200 development jobs in the last week, but she declined to comment further.

Oracle leads the global database market in overall market share but is facing rising competition from less costly Microsoft and IBM offerings. In addition, industry analysts say Oracle's high-end database sales have been cannibalized by the vendor's lower-cost departmental database.

Many observers say Oracle's shift to Linux and commodity hardware are efforts to fend off competitors. "If you look at what IBM is doing in Germany [with a huge Linux software sale to the German government, that's a top-tier move against Microsoft," said Terilyn Palanca, an analyst at research firm Giga Information Group. "And now Oracle is attacking on the database side. This is a two-pronged attack with Linux by two major players."

Mark Shainman, an analyst at The Meta Group, said Oracle needs to counter IBM's outspoken support of Linux. "My belief is that Oracle is coming to the realization that IBM has been the champion of Linux and as Linux grows in importance and viability--as does Microsoft SQL Server [on Windows--Oracle doesn't want to be the database that's marginalized on any of these platforms," Shainman said. "They've been seen as Oracle on Sun. IBM has been 'the' database on Linux. This [move is the counter to that. They have to promote RAC on Linux."

Indeed, Oracle has been touting the viability of Linux and commodity hardware for some time. Last December, George Roberts, executive vice president of North American Sales at Oracle, said in an interview that the company planned to put many of its critical internal systems on the open-source operating system.

"Linux is huge," Roberts said in the interview. "It's cracking the enterprise . . . and we're moving all our online demos to Linux because of better performance and reliability. That's pretty important. We wouldn't do it if we didn't think it was ready. Oracle.com will be on Linux shortly."