"We work with Oracle and Red Hat and, like any other vendor, they have the goods but we are not doing anything dramatic."

While the IT department "doesn't have a problem" with Red Hat or Oracle tools, if they start "getting in on each other's game" it can look at how the market evolves, according to the CIO.

"Red Hat might see it as a threat but we don't," he said. "There are a couple of dozen Linux distributions out there and you can buy support for them. The choices are great and many so it's no concern on my behalf."

William Wheatley, a systems administrator with manufacturing company Australian Arrow, was also nonchalant about the idea of Oracle muscling in on Red Hat's turf.

Australian Arrow uses RHEL but no software from Oracle.