Oracle decided to ship its Oracle 11g on Linux and not on Microsoft Windows. The news didn't shock anyone, especially since it was actually obvious that Oracle will make such movement in order to increase its market share, seriously affected by the increased demand for Microsoft's SQL Server.

"What we see is that of all the various operating systems out there, only two are gaining strong adoption among enterprises: Linux and Windows. Although Oracle database management systems [DBMS] used to dominate the Windows platform eight years ago, today it's SQL Server.", says Noel Yuhanna, principal analyst with Forrester Research Inc.

According to Yuhanna, Oracle's share of the DBMS market has declined to the point where the platform has become less strategic to Oracle, therefore it relies on Linux's popularity to bring some adjustments in this area. As Yuhanna also believes, this should be a clever movement because this way, "if Linux grows, Oracle grows".

Some other analysts, including the famous Westport, Conn.-based Saugatuck Technology Inc., foresee positive trends for the Linux - Oracle combination. The company believes that mission-critical deployments of Linux, including the database deployments, would reach impressive market quotas such as more than 50% of all data centers by 2011.

At the time they announced it, the Oracle executives refused to unveil whether the 11g version will also offer support for Windows and when that would happen. If we were to follow the traditional trend, then Windows / Sun Solaris/ HP-UX releases should be expected a couple of months later. Wim Coekaerts, the Oracle Vice President of Linux Engineering, also claimed that there aren't available for press releases any specifics regarding the number of Oracle deployments on Linux and Windows. However, it seems that since 2006, the use of Oracle on Linux systems has grown by 72%, as a Gartner Inc. release from last month claims.