The Linux cloud management services market is getting more crowded as bigger and bigger players are looking to grow their share of the pie. The latest is Example is Oracle, which acquired KSplice for an undisclosed amount. The privately-owned firm has a popular zero downtime update offering that Oracle will integrate with Oracle Linux Premier Support,  a service that is currently used by an estimated 7,000 customers.

“Ksplice’s technology   will be able to take Oracle’s kernel updates and transform them into zero downtime updates that provide always-accessible systems with no reboot necessary. This results in improved system availability and security as well as reduced operational costs for the customer,” said Jeff Arnold, CEO of Ksplice.

Oracle has both Linux and Unix distributions, and it intends to strengthen its Linux line-up in light of the largest amount of datacenters that run both of the operating systems in some form.

Attachmate’s SUSE Linux unit, the second most popular Linux distribution after Red Hat’s, had some news as well. It announced SUSE Studio 1.2., the latest version of its cloud platform. That offering now includes support for public clouds as well as x86 and System Z mainframe systems. Nils Brauckmann, head of SUSE Linux, shed some light on his outlook for the independent business. He said in an interview that SUSE Linux will collaborate with open-source initiatives to enhance its distribution, and that we can expect some sort of update in a few months.

Linux is gaining support from more than one industry, including cloud storage. OnApp announced version 2.2 of its cloud management offering for web hosts, which including an ‘autoscale up’ and ‘autoscale’ feature for Linux as well support for the FreeBSD distro.

Earlier, open storage solutions maker Gluster announced that it has too jumped on the bandwagon, joining the Linux Foundation. OpenStack, in turn, is doing the same although in a different regard – the initiative is focused at its core on developing an ecosystem poised for growth, and the recent anniversary EMEA OpenStack Day in London is the latest example.