Oracle.. What do you think?

Good thing because it is not Microsoft… and it is an alternative to Microsoft..

Oracle claims that they are “not complex” They say they use to be complex but over the last 10-15 years they have been focusing on making the database easier to use.. they say they are so much easier number of steps to do something, list price.  They say they are @ least half the cost as their nearest competitor.

Oracle asks.. how do you share business critical information? Are you constantly consolidating spreadsheets? How do you secure that information from unauthorized access?

Oracle has been buying companies left and right.  They have a ton of good solid partnerships.  The aquisitions go to the product portfolio.

Standard Edition One (2 socket max).  Enterprise (unlimited processor).  Standard Edition (4 socket max).  No migration and upgrade.  Easy to install and upgrade…

Here is a graph from Oracle regarding pricing… 1-5 users? This is super duper small business.. but overall not too bad.  What do you think?  Good alternative to Microsoft for small business too?

 

Oracle KILLS Virtual Iron

I cannot believe how fast this Oracle-Virtual Iron purchase has come around.   Maybe because Virtual Iron was so much smaller & maybe because Oracle did not purchase them because of their customers & partners.  Why the heck DID oracle purchase Virtual Iron?  Anyone that has Virtual Iron will NOT move to Oracle.. for sure.. with the horrible weird letters and complete lack of support, what a joke.  But not a funny one.

If you have Virtual Iron & need support for the next few months, Oracle says you can call their Virtual Iron desk at 800 223 1711.  Of course that number was not very easy to find & probably should have been listed on their stupid letters to customers & partners. 

Oracle is completely shutting down the Virtual Iron product without giving customers ANY sort of replacement.  You would think that when Virtual Iron agreed to this stupid buy out, they would have had certain terms & conditions set up… I guess they did not care either..   It looks like the numbers are just too small for Oracle to care about.  According to The Times, Virtual Iron only had $3.4 million in revenue last year after spending $17.7 million on sales, marketing, research, development & administrative costs.  

Oracle says that it will continue to provide general support for Virtual Iron Extended Enterprise Product through September 3, 2009 for version 4.4 and through January for version 4.5.  And it will offer lifetime support for all products.  But what a joke, this product is going to be dead very very soon.

Of course VMware is taking full advantage of this jalopy Oracle/Virtual Iron thing.. which they SHOULD.   VMware is offering 40% discount from list to current Virtual Iron customers.  

http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=56B66423-1A64-67EA-E4DD1CABA45A0EB3 

It is not officially out yet, but that is a good idea.

Crazy buy outs.

Oracle Terminates Virtual Iron Reseller Partners..

Yeah well oh well.

Partners all received a letter from Oracle & a couple of Virtual Iron’s key sales and channel people have left Virtual Iron which are of course signs that Oracle’s main purpose of acquiring Virtual Iron is to absorb its technology into its Oracle VM server vitalization offering..  Man that was fast huh?

Virtual Iron’s dynamic resource and capability management technology adds the management capabilities which VM requires in order to compete with other server virtualization offerings such as VMware ESXi and vSphere 4, Citrix XenServer & Microsoft Hyper V.

Legacy Virtual Iron solution providers earlier this month received a letter from Oracle via Fedex saying that they have been “terminated” as a Virtual Iron partner but will be reconsidered for re-signing as an Oracle partner.  Yeah will thanks Oracle..

Oracle did not mention anything about transition plans or support for existing customers.  I guess they do not care about keeping Virtual Iron’s customer base & partners.  Virtual iron focuses on smaller customers & smaller customers are not Oracle’s focus.

Kind of fast huh.. Well then there you go..

Oracle Now Buys Virtual Iron

Here is the email that I just got from Virtual Iron below..

Interesting and frankly interesting timing with this Intel scandal that went out this morning.  VMware has the market share of virtual technology.  That & Microsoft HyperV.  Server manufactures are now listing that they support Microsoft & VMware.. but no where Virtual Iron. Not a very good selling point for Virtual Iron.  But Virtual Iron IS a really, really, really good product!  AND it is MUCH cheaper then the alternative VMware.   Maybe Virtual Iron did not have the capacity to contact all of the manufactures pay them for them to support their technology, maybe this move is a very good one for Virtual Iron & for our prices!  Maybe VMware will start to be more competitive with prices to compete with Virtual Iron..?  Maybe.. just maybe..!!

Today we are announcing an exciting development at Virtual Iron: this morning, Oracle announced their intention to acquire us. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in the summer of 2009. Until the deal closes, each company will continue to operate independently.

The combination of Virtual Iron with Oracle is expected to provide comprehensive and dynamic virtualization management across the full data center stack. Oracle VM, combined with Virtual Iron, is expected to deliver extensive virtualization management features including dynamic resource and capacity management and streamlined network and storage configuration capabilities on top of a scalable, highly available, and high performance server platform.

Virtual Iron customers are expected to benefit from a highly complementary combination of products that deliver a more complete virtualization management capability than available today. Virtual Iron customers are also expected to benefit from improved service and support through the breadth and scale of Oracle’s service and customer support organizations. Further, the scale of the combined business is expected to accelerate innovation for customers via Oracle’s $2.8 billion R&D investment and technology base.

To learn more about the proposed combination, please visit oracle.com/virtualiron. You will find a general presentation and a frequently asked questions document that will provide greater detail on the acquisition.

We appreciate your continued support.

Sincerely,
Ed Walsh
President and CEO
Virtual Iron Software, Inc. 

So Oracle Buys Sun…

The first thing I thought about was Pillar Data.  Is Larry going to change/shut down Pillar Data?  Well prob not..  Pillar can replace LSI with Sun for the OEM.   But oh there is so much more then Pillar Data..

An offer less than what IBM first put on the table, but 15 cents hire than IBMs post due diligence offer and it looks like Oracle are willing to fight it out with the regulators to prove that also owning MySQL isn’t an issue.

If you’re a Sun stockholder the board appears to have done it’s job. But I still expect briefs from Microsoft and IBM to land on desks at the European Commission by the end of the week.

So this puts MySQL, Solaris and Java in Oracle’s pocket and puts Oracle in the server and storage hardware business. Interestingly they’re playing down owning the hardware components and a large tape business. One assumes a quick death for the Oracle/HP Exadata storage system since HP is now firmly on Oracle’s hit list as a Sun server competitor.

Everything which isn’t Java, MySQL or Solaris is probably now dead. Expect maintenance costs to sky rocket as per previous Oracle acquisitions.

Since they now consider Solaris a crown jewel I wouldn’t expect NetApp to catch any breaks in their ZFS case. Charles Phillips going so far as saying

Oracle can optimize the Oracle database for some of the unique, high-end features of Solaris.

You mean like DTrace and ZFS? Probably the only unique features of Solaris.

This is an interesting deal for a number of reasons, one of them being Oracle has long tried to commoditise the hardware business and now finds itself in it.

They’ll be selling one trick appliances like Exadata (And I can’t find a customer who hasn’t turned their nose up at that), but they’re now a hardware vendor none the less.

Interesting shout out about protecting customers SPARC investment in those materials. The thought of losing that SPARC maintenance stream must have been a more damaging blow than anyone would have thought.

It does make sense that this is a defensive move. The maintenance revenue for Oracle running on Solaris/SPARC must be huge and that falling into the hands of IBM must have been a waking nightmare.

Looks like SPARC will continue for a while to come.

The smacks of a $7B defensive move on Oracle’s part. Yes they pick up Java and MySQL but keeping Solaris and SPARC means you’re keeping the parts other companies would have quietly disposed of in the face of Linux and Intel based processors.

There are much cheaper ways of getting into the server and storage business than buying Sun and taking on all that baggage, there’s also the fact that buying hardware companies is like drinking a ladle full of castor oil.

It might be required but it’s such a brutal, cut throat, low margin business you know it’s going to upset your regularity for a while… (yeah gross sorry)

And that’s why people don’t do it that often.

We will see what happens!!!

Oracle to Buy Virtual Iron????

Oh my.. did you hear? Oracle is rumored to buy Virtual Iron..

Oracle is aiming at Virtual Iron to expand its server virtulization platform.

Right now, Virtual Iron is the 5th largest server virtulization vendor.  And overall Virtual Iron’s technology is pretty complementary to Oracle’s Virtual Machine and much more affordable then the very popular Vmware.

Virtual Iron was founded in 2003 and they initally only had a Single Server Image implementation they sold under the Virtual Iron VFe product name but somewhere in 2005 they changed gears and became a supplier of a server virtualization and virtual infrastructure management solution a Virtulization Solution based on Open Source Technologies or back then a Xen Management Solution.

When RedHat moves toward KVM, it leaves a gap to fill for Oracle which with Oracle VM today is putting its eggs in the Xen basket.  Oracle just hosted the Xen Summit and has Wim Coekaerts on the Xen Advisory Board.  So adding a company like Vmware to Oracle to manage those Zen based VM’s may be a good idea.