Miracle Linux president sees more growth ahead

First off, does Red Hat really dominate anything in the Asian market? And more importantly, how in the heck does Japan seriously have anything to worry about when they RULE the electronics market? So we have software, big deal!

Two years ago, Japanese Linux server operating system developer Miracle Linux Corp. decided it needed to better promote its local Linux distribution. It developed two aims, according to Miracle’s president, Takeshi Sato.

One was to attack Red Hat Inc.’s dominance in the Japanese Linux market for enterprise servers, the other was to kick-start a pan-Asian fight-back against U.S. dominance of the global IT market, he said.

When Sato became president, on June 1, 2003, Miracle Linux had 23% of the Japanese market for server installations using Linux compared to Red Hat’s 50%, Sato said, quoting estimates from Japan’s Yano Research Institute Ltd.

In 2004, his company joined with China’s Red Flag Software Co. to develop the Asianux Linux 1.0 distribution, which provides a common kernel, library and packages for server operating systems.

Asianux hit the region a year ago and is sold by Miracle Linux in Japan under its own brand name. To sell Asianux, Sato also gets help from Oracle Corp. Japan, which has a 58.5% stake in Miracle Linux. Oracle provides certification for Miracle’s Linux products and offers them for sale with Oracle products.

Japan’s growing Linux market and the support from Oracle appear to be paying dividends. In the year to May 2005, Miracle Linux doubled the number of new licenses it sold compared to the previous year, according to Sato.

The release of Asianux 2.0 in Japan this September may boost the company’s business again as cost-conscious CIOs dump Unix in favor of Linux, he said.

But challenging Japan’s Windows server market remains a dream, Sato said, in a recent interview with IDG News Service. Following is an edited transcript. [Read the rest]