The launch of Oracle 10g

Alan Pelz-Sharpe and Neil Macehiter

This week in San Francisco, Oracle announced its new Oracle 10g, an initiative by the company to launch grid computing out of academia and into the enterprise. Alan Pelz-Sharpe and Neil Macehiter give their views on the launch and wonder what this all means for the future of the Oracle/Sun relationship.

In the opening keynote address, Charles (Chuck) Phillips, Executive Vice President (EVP), described OracleWorld 2003 as a “milestone event” for the company and the industry, heralding the dawn of grid computing in the enterprise. The availability of commodity 1-4 CPU servers, running an inexpensive operating system – Linux – connected to networked storage, via fast interconnect technologies would provide the infrastructure required to help CIOs to reduce costs without compromising business responsiveness. What’s is now needed, he claimed, is a software layer capable of exploiting that infrastructure. This in turn set the scene for Larry Ellison, to officially launch the Oracle enterprise grid software layer – 10g.

A low key and subdued Ellison!

In contrast to some of his recent keynotes, the Oracle CEO was low key and subdued. He began with a history lesson. He described IBM’s introduction of the 360 architecture in 1964, then10 years later the formation of Amdahl and the start of the race to create bigger and faster computers. The (mercifully short) lesson ended in the present day with grid, which he claimed to be the first new approach in 40 years. (Larry appeared to have forgotten client/server and the Internet – the fact that the latter was sufficient to warrant the addition of an ‘i’ to Oracle’s product nomenclature suggesting it was just as significant, just as the grid has prompted the ‘g’).

The remainder of the keynote discussed the capabilities of the key components of 10g: the 10g database and application server together with extensions to Oracle Enterprise Manager: grid control – along with a dismissal of IBM’s grid strategy as being little more than an on demand billing agreement.

In fairness, this was the stuff of keynotes – overarching, generalised and dismissive – but with some strong undercurrents. For once this was not a launch focussed on speeds and feeds but rather that 10g has been planned as a pragmatic, evolutionary step for the company which plays to the challenges faced by today’s CIO. In the end, a less exciting, but more realistic and sensible approach to business for Oracle moving forward.

The uncertain future for Sun

Another undercurrent was the unravelling of Sun and Oracle’s 20+ year partnership. Scott McNealy, the Sun CEO, in what was at times a crude, and unfunny keynote address (constant tiresome jibes at Microsoft, IBM and Dell) earlier in the day, was at pains to emphasise the symbiotic nature of the partnership between Sun and Oracle. Larry Ellison’s keynote however did not echo this sentiment. The message was clear, Li(nux on In)tel is the order of the day at Oracle, both in terms of the grid in general and Oracle’s own internal grid deployments. Oracle University runs all of its courses in a grid of 240 Linux servers and more than 500 support Oracle’s outsourcing business. There was no mention or consideration of Sun in Oracle’s future. From Oracle’s point of view the future is Dell and Linux.

Not a big splash

The 10g launch was maybe not the big splash that Oracle had hoped for – in part because 10g had been pre-announced in the press - but it’s a sound and pragmatic way forward for the company. This is true for Oracle as a whole, for as Larry himself is always keen to point out, the industry is becoming standardised and boring. And in this standardised, and less than interesting market, Oracle look set to remain a key, if not leading player. But in fact, it’s not all dull, and boring. A few things were alluded to that present a potentially colourful future.

Building on the earlier announcements, Chuck Rowzat, Oracle’s EVP for Database Server Technologies stated the company is dedicated to establishing a commercial grid consortium - presumably involving non-technology businesses - providing a strong hint that this is only the start of something bigger.

Grids dedicated to business, constructed on simple clean lines reflecting the needs of business – as opposed to technology vendors...now that would be interesting....

Learn more about Ovum’s expertise of the database market within the SoftwareArchitectures@Ovum and e-Knowledge@Ovum Advisory services.

Or contact Alan Pelz-Sharpe (APS@Ovum.com) and Neil Macehiter (NCM@Ovum.com) directly.

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Ovum forecasts: Global software markets, 2003-2007