Oracle Corp pilots 'Asianux' initiative

The $10 billion Oracle Corporation on Tuesday announced an initiative to promote an Asia-centric Linux operating environment "" or "Asianux" "" that would offer low-cost and reliable software support systems.

The reason for Oracle's announcement for promoting Asianux is simple. Company officials quote an IDC report which has predicted a double-digit growth for software business in countries like China and India.

IDC expects the Linux server and client operating systems market in China to more than double to $41.9 million by 2008.

The report also says the Linux server and client operating systems market in Japan, Oracle's topmost market in Asia-Pacific, will reach around $105 million in 2007.

In his keynote address at the Oracle Open World in the picturesque city of Shanghai, Charles Phillips, the company's president , said the significance of Asianux was really the benefit of time and cost.

"Oracle's overarching goal was to help build Linux standards in the Asian markets so that customers could benefit from greater choice of software and hardware products. Linux was establishing its firm position as the third platform in the server operating systems," he said.

According to Philips, AMD, Dell, HP, Sun and NEC had come forward to certify Oracle's products and support the adoption of the new Linux standard for Asia. Asianux has been jointly developed by China's Red Flag Software Company and Japan's Miracle Linux Corporation at Oracle's China Development Center in Beijing.

(The writer is in Shanghai at the hospitality of Oracle Corporation)