Larry Ellison, chief executive officer of Oracle Corp., has introduced new software support that represents direct competition with Red Hat, the software firm that offers support services to businesses that use the Linux operating system. Ellison says his company's move allows customers using Red Hat Linux to have a choice. He says they can easily switch from support provided by Red Hat to support from Oracle. The Oracle service will be available in 145 countries and 27 languages. Oracle plans to offer a discount of 50 percent for customers who sign up for the service before January 31, 2006. Ellison responded to critics who question Oracle's competitive move by saying that this is how capitalism works. Oracle is offering a better product at a lower price. The direct rivalry with Red Hat is not surprising to industry observers who have tracked Ellison's business career. Oracle went on a major buying spree after 20 years as a pioneer in the database software industry and worked to consolidate the companies in the field. Doing battle with Red Hat in its own arena is the latest part of the software industry consolidation effort. Linux is available at no cost to users, and it is constantly being improved and changed in the open-source system. Red Hat was founded in 1993 and offers technical support to companies that use Linux. By offering its own Linux support version, Oracle is attempting to gain revenue in the support field.