Oracle will release a version of its 9i database software for IBM
mainframe Linux environments in mid-2002, the company said.
Developer releases of the Oracle 9i database for Linux for S/390
and zSeries mainframe servers from IBM are available for free
download on Oracle's Technology Network service, the company said.
"The developer versions have proven quite successful, about 2,000
customers have asked for it and there have been more than 1,000
downloads," said Timothy Payne, director of database marketing for
Oracle in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
The developer versions, which have been available for a few months,
allow users to try out 9i in an S/390 or zSeries environment. The
evaluation software comes in 31-bit and 64-bit versions, as will
the production versions of the database software, Payne said.
Oracle's standard pricing model will apply to the new versions of
9i, he said.
Oracle, which recently announced it will run its "whole business"
on a cluster of Intel-based servers running Linux, has been
evaluating which Oracle products, if any, to deliver on IBM's
mainframe systems running Linux.
"We asked our customers whether they wanted it [9i on IBM mainframe
systems running Linux] and over 2,000 said they did, so we ported
it," said Payne, adding that Oracle has more than 1,500 customers
running its database software on the standard OS/390 platform.
"We are giving customers a choice, they can have the database they
want on the IBM hardware with the OS they want," Payne said.
The move to mainframes, despite increasing the target customer
base, could also mean that Oracle's chairman and chief executive
officer Larry Ellison has come back on his prediction of the demise
of large server systems because of the benefits of Oracle's
clustering technology.