Oracle Touts Linux Tool at Show

Database software specialist Oracle (Quote, Company Info) Wednesday continued to spread the word of Linux, and its support for the open source operating system, by backing it up with a new software tool to help companies migrate their existing Oracle E-Business Suite applications to Linux.

The move appears designed to signal that the company is not letting its $6.3 billion hostile takeover bid for rival application provider PeopleSoft affect its own technological momentum.

Announced at the Redwood Shores, Calif. vendor's Oracle AppsWorld event in London, the move is aimed squarely at moving customers away from Microsoft's (Quote, Company Info) Windows platform. Oracle repeated its mantra that its applications running on the popular open source software will save customers money without losing performance. This promise of greater return-on-investment is alluring at a time when IT dollars are harder to come by than the heyday of a few years ago.

Oracle said its Linux Platform Migration Utility can help customers move Oracle applications from any platform to Linux -- and do it easily. The company said this is partly due to the fact that the migration tool retains the exact patch level and many customizations of the previous implementations, eliminating the need for administrators to retool the database.

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