But on Monday
Microsoft announced that SQL Server, its software for managing corporate data, would also run on Linux, a competing operating system. Other Microsoft products could follow suit, analysts said.
SQL, pronounced “sequel,” is among Microsoft’s most important products, and the chief way it competes with the Oracle Corporation for
business customers.
Microsoft has always sold PC software for other companies’ operating systems, like that used by
Apple’s Macintosh computers. But since becoming chief executive of Microsoft two years ago, Satya Nadella has gone further by creating software to run on other mobile operating systems like Apple iOS, and decoupling Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing system from
Windows.
Now, for the first time that strategy is extending into so-called back-office software, a lucrative but not as well-known part of Microsoft’s business.
