rPath and its whole app appliance push is truly intriguing.

Zimbra is the first of what I think will be many software companies who will go the app appliance route with or maybe without rPath. Sources say to watch SAP in this space. That this ERP kingpin is looking at ways to make ERP leaner and more palatable to companies irked at the high dollar and face it--emotional-- costs of ERP implementations.

AMR's Bruce Richardson has an interesting take here.

Here's the elevator pitch:. Why load a full, bloated operating system instead of the lean-and-mean pieces of it that the app really needs to run? Why not, instead, take the precious core (we're talking Linux here), slap it on the iron, along with the application itself, so what the user gets is what the user needs and not the shelf ware that is inherent in many configurations.

This model might be of huge interest to Oracle as well although, as we all know, Oracle itself has its own Linux group led by Wim Coekaerts , vice president of Linux Engineering. This tells me that Oracle will try to do the app appliance thing alone. Well, actually alone, but with a hardware partner. Hmmm. Who might that be???

This company, formed by Red Hat refugees including former VP Billy Marshall, rPath is a force driving towards for-real application appliances. Basically white box servers pre-built and configured w/ a slim OS, middleware, and the application

Oracle Vet Mark Jarvis Tapped As New Dell CMO

Dell has named Mark Jarvis, a one-time and long-time Oracle exec, as its new chief marketing officer.

Jarvis was a stalwart marketeer at Oracle and later founded Think Smart, a consultancy.

Said one former insider who worked at both companies: "I don't see Mark and Michael getting along. This should be good."