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Oracle To Sell Database Hardware
qazsedcft writes "In a move the company is billing as its first foray into the hardware business, Oracle Corp. said Wednesday it will begin selling server computers that come with its database software pre-installed."
Where've you been the past few years? Insurance companies used to be forbidden from operating in certain other areas. Not so anymore... look at Prudential. They have diversified bigtime.
As for Oracle in particular... this is not an unrelated product. Providing hardware for their software could potentially reduce their support costs significantly. I haven't seen any numbers, and I'm only slightly familiar with Oracle's pricing structure for support, but it seems to me that some of their clientele might prefer one-stop shopping... as they then save money on installation costs.
So rather tha seeing this as Oracle moving away from their core business, maybe a better perspective would be to think of this as supporting their core business.
One other thing to note -- Oracle's core business is no longer software, it's services. While the services business is largely dependent on their software offerings, take a look at their recent revenue figures... and take a bigger look at where their projected growth is.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
It would be nice if submitters took a moment to find some actual information, instead of just submitting the first (usually content free) blurb that they see. A tiny amount of Googling would have turned up this Oracle product page with full technical specs.
It's worth mentioning that this product is not a computer. It's a 42U rack stuffed 8 dbms servers, 14 storage servers, and 4 switches. Which means a lot of low-end 1U servers. Not exactly a lot of computer power. One or two 4U dbms servers and 3 or 4 4U storage servers (like Sun's X4600 and X4500 boxes) would seem more to the point.
Could be that you have a limited view of what their core business is. Is it selling databases? Or, could it be selling database services?
For a given number of dollars, what is the optimum hardware to run a database? How much memory of what type vs how much/many hard disks? Which OS? Which drivers?
Selling the hardware will let them present an entire solution that is optimized for the one thing that they want to do...serve data as quickly as possible. The customer is presented with an appliance that will offer the maximum database performance for a given dollar point. Well, at least as optimized as anything can be with an Oracle Database stamp on it.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
RTFA. There's no "Oracle machine." This is a cobranded HP/Oracle product.