Oracle

Cisco and Oracle look to change data center landscape

Oracle and Cisco may change the landscape in the data center if the companies continue to pursue their current tracks, according to most pundits, and we agree.

Oracle is already the giant of middleware, broader there even than IBM and more focused on making software the premier offering. The Oracle approach to IT is to create a brand around software and middleware, adding hardware to reap the maximum benefit from the sale, but focusing on software (especially middleware) for differentiation.

Cisco wants to ride virtualization and connectivity in the data center, and collaborative applications that link employees, into a dominant position. Cisco’s theory is that owning collaboration could give the company a foot into every application door because collaboration is the broadest of all horizontal applications.

Both companies face competition from incumbent giants IBM and HP, and the big question for 2010 is whether the competition among this group of four will create enough market buzz to build buyer literacy and interest levels enough to create a new technology buying cycle. We’re doubtful that competition alone can do it because competition typically focuses on differentiation rather than project justification. But we’ll have a better idea next month when we complete our enterprise fall planning survey.

Oracle DBMS earnings a good sign

Oracle’s DBMS (database management system) business helped boost its revenues by 14% and profits by 28%, offering the first new data point on the tech space, a favorable one. This continues to show that the strategic cycle is not yet derailed, and that would mean that tech spending in 2009 would not be likely to be impacted significantly by the current market conditions. We have a more complete analysis of this situation scheduled in the current issue of Netwatcher, due to be available by around September 25th

OSS, SDP converge as vendors, providers shift business strategies

There are signs that the OSS world and the SDP world are converging, with the driver being a combination of the strategies of major vendors and the shift of service providers toward IT dominance of infrastructure projects.

Major players in the OSS space like Amdocs and Telcordia are becoming players in the SDP space, and vendors like Oracle who have SDP plans are now looking at whether they also must field a full OSS platform.

All of this is happening because the network operators, as part of their IP transformation strategies, are demanding more agile services at lower operating costs. Achieving that combination is not a network mission at all, but rather an OSS/SDP mission, or more broadly a mission of software and systems — IT.

We have noted before the growing momentum for change in the TMF, the only standards body that is taking up both OSS and SDP missions, and we believe that body has read the tea leaves and is positioning itself for maximum relevance in what is likely to be the major 2009 market trend in the carrier space.