Oracle can and will hurt Red Hat

I have seen several articles and blogs stating that Oracle could not possibly provide the high level of support that Red Hat provides its customers. These articles and bloggers opine that Oracle will fail horribly. I have to say that I vehemently disagree. Have any of these people talked with any Oracle or Red Hat customers, or read any research from analysts on this topic? It has been known for a long time that Red Hat customers are not very happy with Red Hat support. In addition, it is well known that it is often a bear to deploy Oracle on Linux because the Oracle DB only works with certain versions of the kernel, the system is very volitile on upgrade, and customers are loathe to upgrade unless they have to.

The title of this blog entry is probably a bit too strong, but to say at this stage that Oracle will fail is very premature. Oracle made this move for real reasons, and if they can execute on what they have set out to do they will cause real problems for Red Hat.

Would love to say more on this topic, but will have to leave that for later.