Oracle looks at Xen for grid computing

Oracle is one of the biggest companies in the IT world creating problems to virtualization adopters because it refuses to adjust support policy and licensing model for virtualization environment.

Several customers are working to move away from Oracle because of that and this may be a reason why the company is now changing its message:

As server virtualization continues to grow in popularity in government data centers, enterprise software provider Oracle will increasingly put its weight behind Xen open-source virtualization software, Charles Phillips, president at Oracle, told GCN in a recent interview.

“We’re big proponents of Linux and standard technologies, so we’re going to put the time toward Xen,” Phillips said. “Our strategy will be around Xen.”

“We have not certified our products for VMWare,” Phillips said, adding that “people do that on their own.” Oracle will, instead, put more of its efforts behind Xen.

The company’s efforts at grid-enabling its software would benefit by Xen, he said. Adding a node to a grid cluster might still involve manual work, such as configuring the network addresses. Virtualization could help automate such processes, he said…

This is another strange move from Oracle: XenSource, which is one of the major contributors of Xen, has been acquired by Citrix, and Xen main architect is now a Citrix employee. Citrix has a very tight relationship with Microsoft and it’s hard to believe Oracle may fit this scenario in an easy way.