Dell, Oracle expand partnership to deliver industry-standard enterprise computing solutions

Dell and Oracle today announced an expansion of the companies` strategic alliance, including a global sales agreement, new low-cost configurations of Dell PowerEdge servers with Oracle9i Database and jointly delivered services.

With more than 22 000 Oracle-on-Dell installations, the companies have already demonstrated strong success in delivering better enterprise value to a wide range of customers, including Acuity Brands` Lighting Group, City of Baton Rouge, Electronic Arts, Menasha Corporation, Mercedes-Benz Customer Assistance Centre and Precision Response Corporation.

This announcement broadens the existing Dell-Oracle US sales agreement for Oracle9i Database and Oracle9i Application Server to Europe and Asia, making it easier for customers to deploy Oracle software on Dell servers while maintaining a single point of contact with Dell.

The companies also introduced low-cost clusters to make it affordable for customers of all sizes to adopt Dell and Oracle enterprise solutions. Dell offers a server/storage platform optimised for Oracle9i Database with Real Application Clusters for both Red Hat Linux Advanced Server and Microsoft Windows environments. Now small and medium-sized businesses can benefit from the performance, availability and scalability of Dell PowerEdge server clusters backed by entry-level Dell | EMC CX200 storage arrays or Dell PowerVault SCSI disk enclosures.

In addition, Dell Services is partnering with Oracle Consulting to offer a suite of professional services. These services will reduce costs and ease deployment for customers migrating from proprietary, legacy database architectures to Oracle9i Database with Real Application Clusters on standards-based Dell server and storage platforms.

These fixed-price offerings include: migration services to "fast-track" customers from Unix to Linux for Oracle9i Database; implementation services to help customers quickly deploy Oracle9i Database with Real Application Clusters; and performance and capacity tuning as well as database mirroring and disaster recovery planning.

Maintaining its direct accountability to customers for hardware, software and services, Dell Services, working with Oracle consultants, will help customers plan, design, deploy and support highly available, high-performance architectures that can scale as business needs grow. These services, including training and certification, are available immediately for customers in the US and Canada with support for Europe, Asia and Latin America expected later this year. Prices for the new services depend on the project requirements.

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"Our growing partnership with Oracle mirrors customers` increasing preference for standards-based solutions to address business-critical computing requirements," said Tony Bogatie, Dell South Africa`s Enterprise Group Systems Director. "The extension of our relationship demonstrates our mutual commitment to deliver fully integrated enterprise systems backed by world-class services that can scale to meet customers` future business requirements, while delivering lower total cost of ownership today."

"Oracle9i Database with Real Application Clusters brings enterprise reliability and scalability to low-cost servers running Linux for mission critical applications," continued Bogatie. "Oracle`s Unbreakable Linux effort is making highly available, low-cost Linux database clusters very attractive to the data centre; a perfect complement to Dell`s low cost standard building block approach to enterprise computing environments."

Oracle on Dell

With more than 100 Dell PowerEdge servers deployed internally, Oracle is using Dell as the 32-bit Linux development platform for its current and next-generation database products. Oracle and Dell engineering teams are also working together to assess the benefits of next-generation technologies such as InfiniBand to customers deploying Intel architecture clusters. Oracle`s labs are running InfiniBand performance tests on Dell systems that show more than a doubling of interconnect performance, which translates to higher reliability and better response times. Future tests and tuning are expected to show dramatic performance increases in the next several months. As a result, Oracle will include full InfiniBand support in the next major release of Oracle9i Database.

Dell also has worked extensively with Oracle to deliver the first Oracle9i Database Certified Configuration running Red Hat Linux and the first Oracle clustering certification on Dell | EMC storage arrays.

In addition, Dell currently runs its order status system, which processes more than 125,000 transactions per hour, on Oracle9i Database with Real Application Clusters on Linux powered by its own servers - a deployment that is 89% faster and 39% less expensive than a proprietary Unix alternative.

For more information about the Dell Oracle alliance, go to www.dell.co.za/oracle.