Hyper-V, once considered an unworthy and incapable competitor to vSphere, recently gained an advantage over VMware’s platform in the form of Oracle support. On Monday, Larry Ellison’s firm announced that it has certified its Windows Server software lineup to run on the latest version of Microsoft’s hypervisor.

Scott Lowe, the founder of The 1610 Group, believes that the announcement is a big win for Microsoft and its customers. The deal makes Oracle’s Linux distribution more accessible for users because it introduces “license mobility,” which means that Azure users don’t have to pay extra to deploy the OS in their instances. More importantly, the certification provides CIOs with a potentially attractive alternative to the three options they had to choose from until now: using Oracle’s hypervisor, running their Oracle apps on physical hardware, or violating the terms of their support agreements and hoping that the company didn’t catch wind of it.

Lowe expects that the announcement will give both Hyper-V 2012 and Azure a much needed credibility boost. He advises CIOs whose organizations already use Microsoft’s hypervisor to take advantage of the update, and recommends that vSphere users evaluate how Hyper-V matches up to their platform.

Wikibon founder and CTO David Floyer highlights that Oracle also has a lot to gain from the deal.

“What Oracle gets is a platform in the cloud for Java, Oracle database, Oracle WebLogic Server, etc. offered to Windows Azure customers. Azure is a fast growing part of the marketplace, they’ve just about gotten to a billion dollars, and they’re growing fast,” Floyer explained in a recent interview on NewsDesk. “Oracle also gets Oracle Linux available to Windows Azure customers in special pre-configured instances.”