Oracle today announced that Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management, the communications industry's only fully convergent, real-time enterprise revenue management application, will support the Linux platform. The announcement furthers Oracle's commitment to deliver world-class application functionality on Linux. "We are excited that Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management supports Linux," said Scott Firth, Director, Telecommunications Industry Marketing at IBM. "By running Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management and Linux on IBM Bladecenter servers, communications and media organizations can increase their competitive advantage by leveraging a more flexible, functional, scalable and affordable solution." Customers running Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on Linux may benefit from: — Lower Total Cost of Ownership — Hardware, operating system, environmental and support costs may be lower in environments using grid computing with the Linux operating system than in traditional UNIX enterprise server or mainframe environments; — Unparalleled Flexibility and Scalability — Service providers may launch new services at a lower cost of entry by leveraging the modularity and scalability of grid computing; — Greater Choice — x86 based systems are available from a wide range of vendors, allowing service providers to choose the best hardware fit for their environments; — Lower Operating System Support Costs — Customers can benefit from low Linux support costs through the Oracle Unbreakable Linux program and the Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN) — a comprehensive resource for Oracle Unbreakable Linux support subscribers that offers access to software patches, updates and fixes, along with information on the update program and support policies. Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management on Linux can take advantage of the Oracle Unbreakable Linux program, which provides enterprise, award-winning, global support for Linux distributions compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 (RHEL3) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (RHEL4). The full power, functionality and performance of Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management is now available to run on x86-64 bit architectures, allowing customers to implement grid computing environments and benefit from low-cost blade servers provided by multiple vendors. Oracle now provides Linux support for the entire end-to-end solution for the communications industry, including Oracle enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) applications, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Database. "Today we extend Oracle's commitment to Linux to the communications industry with the first carrier-grade, mission-critical application on Linux," said Bhaskar Gorti, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Oracle Communications Global Business Unit. "Oracle is uniquely positioned to help service providers meet their business challenges with more choice in assembling best-in-class solutions. As such, this is the first of several communications applications to support Linux and we'll continue to drive the availability of Linux across the Oracle Communications product portfolio." Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management provides a proven real-time billing and revenue management platform deployed in more than 450 installations worldwide. The application enables communications service providers to radically improve time to market of new services, build stronger brands and lower operational costs, by managing, monetizing and maximizing each revenue stream for any customer type, service offering, partner relationship, payment method, business model or geography.