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Originally Posted by devilsadvocate
VirtualBox actually runs as a service; there is (or at least was) commercial licensing available for enterprise use in terms of server virtualization. If Oracle gave up pursuing that, I think it would be rather short-sighted on their part. It's still not bare-metal but pretty efficient. Ellison might be too high up in his ivory tower to realize this but there's probably more money to be made in SMBs these days considering large businesses are loathe to upgrade servers unless they absolutely have to, and rightly so.
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If I were Oracle, I'd look at offering a bundle: Oracle 11 itself, Linux for it to run under, customized for the task, and VirtualBox to virtualize it, preconfigured for Oracle/Linux instances. Install it on the bare metal, and Poof!, you've got a running virtualised Oracle setup, ready to expand. Oracle costs enough that I'd assume my customers weren't interested in spending more than they had to on the hardware to run it.
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That's what I thought too, but looking around there still seems to be a not-insignificant amount of work to do in keeping up with versions, fixes, and service-packs (or at least MS' support site likes to make a big production out of it). As your friend observed, NetWare's not a shambling corpse just yet, and it indeed "just works"; I wonder if MS wouldn't like to take IPX/SPX protocol bits and use them in a proprietary replacement for CIFS (itself a replacement for the deprecated-but-won't-go-away SMB a.k.a. Samba). After all, CTO's might be more amenable to keep their MS stuff around if it plays nice with future *nix implementations.
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I do wonder how much of the versions, fixes, and service packs relates to Novell support.
And I think the CTOs fall into two categories: those that are Windows shops and are joined at the hip to MS, and those running Linux that MS would like to attract.
A former employer ran Windows, Solaris, and Linux (with some legacy Netware they were working on getting rid of.) Their public facing web servers ran on Windows 2003 server with IIS. I asked the guy responsible for them about security concerns, and his response "I keep them fully patched", then put his hands together and moved his lips in a pantomime of heartfelt prayer.
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I'm just theorizing on MS' take on the whole thing; it's a moot point anyway. On the other hand, nobody's signed anything yet, so there could be a surprise around the corner; after all, MS is flush with cash right now and Novell could pretty much be had for a song...the name alone might be worth the investment in Ballmer's view.
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They're flush with cash, but I really don't see the ROI in buying Novell. If they did, I'd expect the reason to be indirect: throw a spanner into someone else's works by preventing
them from buying it.
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Dennis