PHYSICS

With more than 9,000 developers slated to create Oracle products on the Linux operating system, Oracle will soon boast the largest Linux-based development organization in the world. The company began the global initiative last year with the migration of 5,000 developers to Linux, and anticipates that by the end of 2004, its core development team worldwide will be leveraging the operating system. With Linux, Oracle developers have a broader choice of hardware platforms and can use cheap, fast hardware in a grid environment to help increase productivity and enhance testing capabilities. "Over the past year, Linux adoption has become widespread," said Wim Coekaerts, director of Linux Engineering, Oracle Corp, "Companies are now using Linux for everything from product development to running mission critical systems and now on the desktop. By building all of our products on Linux, we've decreased our own development costs, increased productivity and gained greater insight into what our customers experience running Oracle on Linux. This has enabled us to be more responsive and anticipate customer needs." The global migration of Oracle's core development team to Linux illustrates the momentum it has gained in the enterprise and is a testament to Oracle's ongoing investment in the operating system. More importantly, Oracle's support of Linux is helping organizations realize the benefits of low-cost, standards-based hardware. This commitment is evidenced through a number of Oracle initiatives, including: -- Strategic partnerships with key Linux providers Red Hat, Novell, Miracle Linux and Red Flag; -- A 6,000-plus global support team that provides complete technical support to Oracle customers running on Linux; -- Oracle Linux Kernel Group -- a team dedicated 24/7 to working with Linux vendors, providing fixes and developing new functionality to directly benefit the Linux community; -- Oracle Linux and Open Source Developer Centers -- providing developers with access to source codes and Oracle on Linux via the Oracle Technology Network at http://otn.oracle.com/linux or http://oss.oracle.com/ ; -- One thousand-plus commercially available partner applications on the Linux/Oracle platform.