While Oracle will also benefit from having to field fewer support calls, Coekaerts said, the company will not offer inducements or penalties to encourage customers to deploy Validated Configurations. "We can't dictate what customers run," he said.

Oracle plans to create Validated Configurations for its application server and other software that run on Linux, Coekaerts said, though he offered no timetable. He also said the company has no plans now to expand its certification program to versions of Linux other than Red Hat or SUSE.

More information about Oracle's plan is available online.