ActewAGL, the company which manages IT systems for TransACT, has a mix of Oracle on Solaris and SQL Server on Windows so Red Hat Linux was an isolated platform, according to CIO Carsten Larsen.

Larsen told Computerworld TransACT dabbled with Linux for a while and transferred one of its most important systems to Oracle on Linux, but it had an "ugly duckling" on the side and either company didn't use Linux for anything else.

"ActewAGL has one development platform -- SQL Server, and we have a lot of Oracle for billing but don't develop with it," Larsen said. "In the scheme of things it's a small change but Microsoft thinks it's a big change."

ActewAGL found it difficult to manage the application without Linux or Oracle programming skills so it transferred to C# for which skills are plentiful within the organization.

Larsen said Red Hat's announcement of the Solaris migration was over-hyped and it "made out as if we were going to transfer all our systems to Red Hat".