Oracle database and enterprise applications

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Continuing this week's theme on Enterprise Applications, today I will cover Oracle.

IBM is Oracle's number #1 integration partner, and has the leading market share, nearly 40 percent, for IT hardware running Oracle applications. In the coopetition category, Oracle's databases competes against IBM's DB2 database offerings, and Oracle'sapplications compete against SAP's set of Enterprise Apps. While SAP offers its own internal database, most production SAP environmentsuse either an Oracle or IBM database instead. Comparing license revenues, Oracle's application side earns roughly 70 percent of the amount SAP applications earn.

To compete against SAP, Oracle has been on a spending spree of acquisitions. This includes PeopleSoft, Siebel, Hyperion, Agile, and JD Edwards.IBM can help with all of these applications, and many clients continue to use IBM DB2 as the underlying database, rather than switching over to Oracle database. For example, IBM has sizing tools to help identify the right amount of servers and storage based on "best practice" experience.

Server Platforms

Oracle's database uses a number-letter combination. "9i" was Version 9, "i" for Internet. "10g" and "11g" are versions 10 and 11, "g" for Grid. Most of the Oracle customers I deal with are still on 9i or 10g. The 11g releaseis supported on Linux and Windows, with the other platforms to be delivered in a staged approach.

Alternatively, most run also on AIX on System p, and Linux/Windows on System x. For System i customers, the Oracle supports its [JD Edwards World] andJD Edwards Enterprise One natively on i5/OS, the other applications can run under an AIX LPAR on an System i server.

While some of my readers cringe everytime I mentioned benchmarking, IBM has the top benchmarks for Oracle 10g database, [Oracle e-Business Suite], JD Edwards and PeopleSoft.

As with SAP, it is possible with Oracle to run a front-end application on one server platform, and theback-end database on a different server platform. Many of IBM's largest customers run the front-end onAIX or Linux, and then use z/OS on System z for the back-end database.

Oracle has implemented a "Scale-Out" approach called Real Application Clusters [RAC],pronounced same as "rack", which I discussed before [Similar Sounding Storage Speech].Several servers can act as an "application cluster" to access a common database. This approachallows customers to use a bunch of x86 servers instead of a bigger System p or System i machine. Additional processor capability can simply be added into the "application cluster" as needed.

IBM and Oracle are both staunch proponents of Linux. Oracle offers theirOracle Enterprise Linux support program.In this support program, Oracle will offer support service contracts for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) corporatecustomers.This could explain why Oracle decided to support[Linux first]on its new 11g database, rather than Windows.

What's New

To deal with all of their acquisitions, Oracle has announced its Applications Unlimited strategy. Inthis strategy, the Oracle Fusion middleware will support all of Oracle'sapplications, including JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and Seibel. This is good for IBM, as it will simplify IBM's testing of server and storage platforms for its Oracle clients.

technorati tags: IBM, Oracle, SAP, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel, Hyperion, Agile, Red Hat, RHEL, 9i, 10g, 11g, z/OS, i5/OS, AIX, Linux, Windows, Oracle Enterprise Linux, Real Application Clusters, RAC, Fusion, Applications Unlimited