The dust has finally settled and the world’s largest technology event, better known as Oracle OpenWorld, has come and gone. Although thoughts of this colossal undertaking may have dwindled for some, three buzzwords used to reflect Oracle’s pioneering vision at the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Forum still remain fresh in my mind: Innovation, Engineering and Execution.
In case you missed the OPN Forum, along with Judson’s dynamic keynote speech, let me catch you up to speed on some of this year’s exciting announcements. We were thrilled to announce innovations in the core tech arena, including Oracle Exastack. In the simplest of terms the Oracle Exastack Program helps ISVs deliver their applications tested, tuned and optimized for high-performance on Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud – integrated systems products in which the software and hardware are engineered to work together.
Hardware News Alert!
Oracle’s recent launch of the Oracle Database Appliance was nothing shy of ground breaking. Launched in September and highlighted at OPN Forum at Oracle OpenWorld, this product is considered one of the most significant for the channel in Oracle’s history.
How Does Oracle Database Appliance Work?
The Oracle Database Appliance is a simple, reliable, affordable and highly available solution designed to address the data management needs of small and midsize companies or enterprise departments. An engineered system of software, servers, storage and networking, the Oracle Database Appliance combines a
dramatically simpler user experience with pay-as-you-grow pricing – making it ideal for Oracle resellers.
Anything Else?
Moving beyond hardware breakthroughs, attendees of the OPN Forum had no problem diving right into partner Special Interest Group sessions. During these sessions they learned about the different ways to increase Oracle sales, as well as ways to strengthen market opportunities through specialization during OPN’s Global session.
By staying true to innovation, engineering and a solid final execution, Oracle has been able to explore uncharted territory, and imagine the impossible, ultimately positioning itself as the industry leader for any and all system integrator needs.
Lydia Smyers is GVP of worldwide alliances and channels at Oracle, focusing intensely on the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized program. Monthly guest blogs such as this one are part of The VAR Guy’s annual sponsorship.
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The Oracle Database Appliance is far short of groundbreaking. It fits no one’s requirements. Basically, you have a 4U x86 server with switches built in and OEL pre-loaded. Trouble for mid-size and enterprise DB installs: The “appliance” (read: x86 server) cannot scale beyond one server. When you are out of IO, memory, disk or whatever the bottleneck is on the server, it is a rip and replace. Trouble for small and lower mid-market users: Oracle requires them to license Enterprise Edition 11g database (at $50,000 per core factor) and RAC ($23,500 per core factor). It immediately takes it out of the range of the SMB space as they will purchase a $50,000 server… followed by $500,000 in licensing.
Also, this partner push is very disingenuous on Oracle’s part. They originally wanted to take every account of any size direct and cut out the channel. That was a colossal failure for Sun revenues. Now that they need the channel to sell servers, they want to be best friends. As soon as they no longer need the channel and have a significant number of installs, it is right back to the dust bin for the channel.
This is a pathetic advertisement disguised as editorial. So i buy an annual advertisement package and I get to right a blog. Does The Var Guy also guarantee favorable coverage. Bet he does. This isn’t journalism.
Hi Smart Guy: Constructive criticism is always welcome on The VAR Guy. Sponsored content is labeled as such and runs in our sponsored content area.
-TVG
Sam@1 and @2: Oracle indicated that Avnet, a distributor, ordered 100 of the appliances for partner delivery. The VAR Guy will check in with Avnet to see how the partners are feeling about the appliance and whether the partners/customers share your constructive criticism.
In terms of Oracle’s channel partner program, The VAR Guy knows Oracle certainly competes with partners in named accounts. But in the midmarket, The VAR Guy has heard from partners who continue to do well — without sensing any conflicts from Oracle.
But… The VAR Guy will certainly keep your feedback in mind. It will be interesting to see whether the database appliances catch on with channel partners. Avnet may hold the clues. Checking on that info now.
-TVG
I tend to question when a company over-repeats and over-inflates a certain topic, or product. Since it feels like they are trying to create the impression that it is flying off the shelves and that there is more demand than reality. The old EST approach of “if you say it enough times it will become the truth” type motto.
However I think in this case the world of computing is moving faster than Oracle can control, and it will be clearer and clearer that they are trying to pull people back into yesterday’s models and more vertical lockin, with prices to be raised over time if the plan starts succeeding. The Exa-plan is a control and lock-in play and cave-drag backwards.
Hopefully the world is smart enough to see this and look to fresher solution options, And hopefully people start making Oracle report true sales of these products, not pipeline numbers where they can force sales rep to inflate their numbers, and go three years out, and do weekly updates (e.g. abnormal acts), to create big sounding numbers,
I for one see the Exa-stuff as Exa-Hopeful_hype by Oracle, that the market will become wise to, Which would be a pretty large chink in their armor of their overall strategy. They are due for it.
Sam @1 brings up a very good point with the Oracle Database Appliance – on the surface, it looks like a storage-heavy, Intel-based server with preloaded software.
We did quite a bit of research with specific segments of the mid-market, and with many of our Oracle partners. Our design goals were clear – to significantly reduce the time to deploy, patch, and maintain a database system. While our results may not be perfect, I think they are a strong push forward.
A customer can now deploy a fully-clustered (dual node) database, with a sizable amount of storage (4TB usable), in roughly 2 hours. And patching the entire stack, from firmware to OS to database, is done with a single, certified patch.
And while the system contains 24 processor cores, they do not all have to be licensed. A customer can choose to run the database on, say, 4 cores and only license those cores. More capacity can be added at any time by activating additional cores (and, of course, the purchase of additional licenses).
So while on the surface it may look like we’re just bundling products, there was quite a bit engineering required to provide this level of “ease-of-use”.