Oracle CMT Servers: Outperforming Intel?
The VAR Guy spent most of today listening to Oracle’s latest pitch to partners. The chatter occurred at Avnet Technology Solutions Partner Summit near Denver. Among the highlights: Some new competitive claims involving Sun’s CMT (Chip Multi-threading) servers allegedly outperforming Intel on some fronts. Here are the details, plus six other Oracle partner trends from the Avnet partner conference.
1. Ready to Attack Intel: Sometime on July 28, Oracle will meet with partners here to describe how Sun CMT servers can beat commodity Intel servers in terms of price-per-user and performance-per-watt benefits, The VAR Guy hears. Alas, The VAR Guy hasn’t seen or heard the presentation yet, but he’ll be investigating Oracle’s performance claims.
2. Big Numbers? Sure, Oracle plans to take roughly 4,000 customers direct. But Oracle claims existing Sun partners can find new revenue opportunities by targeting 130,000 North American customers that run Oracle but don’t yet have Sun solutions.
3. Reality Check: Instead of hyping the Oracle relationship, Avnet executives have conceded — multiple times — that the shift from a Sun-centric partner strategy to the Oracle OPN Specialized partner program involves some challenges. Avnet executives sound genuinely upbeat, noting that the distributor’s Sun server sales rose last quarter. However, the big question remains: Just how many Sun partners will evolve to offer Oracle database, middleware and application solutions?
4. Servers and Storage: Sun has a big product portfolio, but Oracle wants partners to focus on two core opportunities — servers and storage. From there, you can expand to Database 11g, Fusion middleware, enterprise management and infrastructure software, asserts Nick Kritikos, VP of partner enablement at Oracle.
5. Open Source Specializations: Most pundits know the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized program includes database, middleware and application specializations. But drill down a bit more, and you’ll discover a Linux Enterprise specialization plus a MySQL specialization. A presentation from Nick Kritikos briefly mentioned that Oracle would launch some MySQL-related marketing efforts, though Kritikos says it’s too soon to share specific details.
6. Database Differentiation: Kritikos insists that the Oracle database customer value proposition remains clear… Nobody, he asserts, can match Oracle in terms of data integrity, high availability and performance. Thanks to Oracle’s database architecture, “competitors won’t catch us for at least 10 to 20 years,” asserted Kritikos.
IBM will surely beg to differ with DB2, and SAP hopes to make a run at the database market with the recent Sybase acquisition.
7. Oracle Enterprise Manager: Oracle is promoting this management platform as a single dashboard for maintaining servers, middleware and applications. Longer term, Enterprise Manager will increasingly support virtual desktops as well. The net result: Watch for Oracle to gradually position Enterprise Manager for service providers and VARs that want to remotely manage customer data centers.
That’s all for now. The VAR Guy will be back soon with additional perspectives from Avnet’s partner conference.
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