Exadata

Top five questions for Oracle OpenWorld 2009

This’ll be easy. As Oracle keeps trying to close its Sun Microsystems acquisition, the top Oracle OpenWorld queries are locked up this year. But partners and solution providers still have other nagging issues they want addressed at the show. So, here goes:

1: What will Oracle do with Sun hardware (and Sun’s hardware channel?) Granted, with those pesky EU regulators breathing down it’s neck–mostly on MySQL questions–Larry Ellison needs to reassure Sun partners and customers that Oracle wants their business but without saying anything detailed that could further inflame the law-and-order crowd.

2: Specifically, how will Oracle deal with Exadata? The first, HP-based big-bang “database machine”  was a direct sale from Oracle although any Oracle partner worth his or her salt knows that can be finessed if they file a non-standard deal and can best the Oracle rep. With a new Sun-based box, will Sun hardware partners get to play? If so, how much will they love competing with Oracle partners (and Oracle direct sales?)

Continued »

Oh wait! There’s more

Still more news from HP just as folks were trying to digest the juicy tidbit that it’s about to meld its printer and PC businesses into one. 

This news is official, however. HP  brought in a former Sun exec to run sales for its  big storage, server and networking business in the Americas. Gee, I wonder what brought that on?  Randy Seidl will be senior vice president of Enterprise Servers and Storage  (ESS) and Networking Group, reporting to executive vice president Dave Donatelli. Continued »