Perregaard, who oversees the Oracle European, Middle East and Africa region, says the open source model is the ultimate utility model, where users simply plug in to a service and pay for what they use, without caring about the infrastructure.

“Being a supported open model means there is a vendor behind the service who aims to make money by providing a good service, be it an operating system, application, or database.”

He says it is likely in the long-term that there will be a move to the open supported model of software as a marketing strategy.

If this does happen, he says, Oracle's relationship with vendors will become more important and the emphasis will switch from consumer to vendor.

Source:ITWeb.co.za