"BTW, Sun Solaris has just been named the standard 64-bit environment for Oracle. Expect others to follow that lead."
Uh huh.
http://www.oracle.com/corporate/press/2005_aug/ondemand%20on%2064bit%20linux.html
Oracle Powers Data Center and Oracle® On Demand with 64-bit Linux
Oracle On Demand Customers Benefit from Oracle Technology and Applications Delivered on x86-64-bit Architecture
LINUXWORLD, SAN FRANCISCO, 10-AUG-2005 Extending its leadership and longstanding commitment to Linux, Oracle today announced that its Oracle(r) On Demand services and Oracle Data Center are now powered by the x86 64-bit architecture. Oracle E- Business Suite On Demand and Oracle Technology On Demand customers, such as Thermos, Cabot Microelectronics, Tropicana and UNOCAL Corporation, benefit from the high- performance, reliability and security provided by Oracle software on a low-cost, Linux platform.
Oracle provides support for the Linux operating system, makes technical contributions to the Linux kernel, and has forged strategic partnerships with hardware vendors and Linux distributors. At Oracle's world-class Data Center, Oracle On Demand customers have mission- critical, transactional applications deployed and managed on AMD-64-based Sun back-end systems running Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES). Oracle On Demand simplifies enterprise computing by eliminating the headache of handling software upgrades, patches, and day-to-day maintenance. Oracle On Demand customers have access to the latest capabilities and pay a predictable, monthly fee.
"As the leading enterprise software vendor driving adoption of the Linux platform, Oracle continues to test and deploy software on the latest architectures to give our customers all of the cost and performance advantages it delivers," said Juergen Rottler, executive vice president, Oracle On Demand and Support Services. "By building our own IT systems on Linux, we help our customers realize first-hand the business benefits as well as the lower IT costs associated with using Linux in an x86 64-bit operating environment."
Oracle Leads with Linux
Since introducing the first database to run on Linux in 1998, Oracle has been committed to furthering Linux adoption across the enterprise. According to Gartner's recently released relational database management system (RDBMS) market share results for 2004, Linux is the fastest growing platform with 118 percent growth and Oracle is the top database on Linux with 81 percent market share.1
Support has been a hallmark of the Oracle-Linux organization since June 2002 when Oracle began providing integrated support for the entire software platform, including the operating system. Currently, customers from around the globe tap into Oracle's global team for 24/7 technical support for Linux. Oracle also has a Linux Kernel Group dedicated to working with Linux vendors and developers to provide fixes and develop new functionality to benefit the Linux community.
No wonder Oracle chose Solaris for the future, their largest Linux DB's were already on Sun hardware!
It's to Oracle's advantage to promote the idea of having its DB run on a dedicated, non-MS box. That way the DB runs on a stable platform which is not vulnerable to MS sabotage (making the platform favor MS DB's and cripple everybody else's)
Oracle Selects the Solaris 10 Operating System as Its Preferred Open Source 64-bit Development and Deployment Environment
SANTA CLARA, CALIF and REDWOOD SHORES, CALIF. 15-NOV-2005 Oracle and Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) today announced that Oracle has chosen the Solaris (TM) 10 Operating System (OS), Sun's multi-platform, open source OS, as its preferred development and deployment platform for most x64 architectures, including x64 (x86, 64-bit) AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon processor-based systems and Sun's UltraSPARC(R)-based systems. The Solaris 10 OS will be used throughout Oracle's development organization. Oracle also plans to release and ship 64-bit versions of all Oracle products on the Solaris OS prior to or simultaneous with the release of its products on other operating systems.
With the selection of the Solaris 10 OS, as well as full access to source code and support for more than 440 x86/x64 systems, Oracle will have access to key features including Dynamic Tracing (DTrace), Solaris Containers and TCP/IP performance enhancements. Today's announcement also helps assure customers that Oracle technologies and applications will take full advantage of the advanced features of the Solaris OS.
"Oracle has long viewed the Solaris OS as an important foundation for Oracle applications, but this announcement takes that one step further. With Solaris 10 Sun has delivered an open source, cross-platform OS. And, it's impossible to ignore the significant market opportunity created by the incredible growth of Solaris 10 along with Sun's industry-standard x64 and UltraSPARC-based systems. Solaris was the clear choice for our development platform," said Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle.
In less than one year, Sun has distributed more than 3 million Solaris OS licenses - free of charge - and the Solaris OS currently supports more than 539 platforms, providing customers with the ability to take advantage of Solaris 10 on the broadest choice of hardware in the industry.
"For more than 20 years, Sun and Oracle have worked together to deliver unparalleled value through joint OS and application tuning and optimization," said Scott McNealy, chairman and CEO, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "Our working together is a major opportunity to continue growing our joint customer base in the x64 and UltraSPARC markets and helps assure customers that our collaboration provides them virtually seamless integration between Sun and Oracle technologies."