Sun Microsystems and Oracle Corporation have expanded their 20-year strategic alliance to include support for Oracle products on Sun's full line of Solaris SPARC, Solaris x86 and Linux systems. The announcement is a further development in Sun's goal of bringing low-cost computing platforms into enterprise environments.
Tertius Bezuidenhout, national SE manager for Sun Microsystems SA, explains that low acquisition cost is only one facet of the company's strategy. "Together with Oracle, Sun is bringing a new level of simplicity and manageability to reduce the total cost of ownership of our products," he says.
Sun is recognised as an optimal platform for Oracle, and the vendors are poised to extend that leadership to systems running Solaris x86 and unbreakable Linux, he adds.
In terms of the extended alliance, Oracle software will run on Sun's Unix Solaris SPARC operating environment, Solaris x86 and Linux on x86. "This brings enterprise reliability and scalability to low-cost servers running mission-critical applications and broadens choice in server environments," says Bezuidenhout.
The agreement includes certification for Oracle9i Database, Oracle9i Database with Real Application Clusters, Oracle9i Application Server, Oracle Collaboration Suite and the Oracle E-Business Suite. An increased focus on Oracle9i Database with Real Application Clusters on Sun furthers the drive to promote highly available, low-cost Oracle on Sun database clusters as an option in the data centre.
Sun and Oracle intend to roll-out a global consolidation programme that will highlight how their joint platforms provide leadership in availability, utilisation and manageability. The programme is expected to define reference architectures across all joint platform offerings and will leverage Sun's iForce Centres and Oracle Technology Centres worldwide to develop proof-of-concepts and reduce customer risk.
Sun and Oracle will also work together to develop automated deployment of Oracle and its resources in an N1-enabled data centre.
"N1 aggregates heterogeneous computing resources and automates the complexity associated with managing technology. The integration of N1 and Oracle is expected to provide the capability to enable a flexible database deployment by allowing for the provisioning of the Oracle database environment, while replacing failed hardware components on the fly," explains Bezuidenhout.
In addition, the companies intend to incorporate Oracle database as the data store for Sun's N1, and work together to make N1 leverage the advantages of Oracle database technology.
Furthermore, Sun and Oracle are working to deliver low-cost computing for collaboration through Oracle Collaboration Suite and Sun's StarOffice software." With an integrated approach that simplifies communications and content, Oracle Collaboration Suite running on the Solaris platform is a more reliable, secure and cost-effective choice to the current fragmented server solutions in the market today," Bezuidenhout says.
On the desktop, Sun's StarOffice software offers a full-featured, multi-platform office suite that offers a cost-effective multi-platform alternative to closed office suites.
Sun and Oracle plan to simplify access to technology and support for developers by sharing information and services across the Sun Developer Connection (http://www.sun.com/developers/) and Oracle's developer portal, the Oracle Technology Network (http://otn.oracle.com/), creating a common community for more than five million developers.
For more information about this announcement and the Oracle Sun alliance, go to http://www.oracle.com/tellmemore/?1755090 or http://sun.com/presskits/lowcostcomputing.
Share
Oracle is the world's largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, visit our Web site at www.oracle.com.
Sun Microsystems, Inc
Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision - "The Network Is The Computer" - has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://www.sun.com.
Editorial contacts