Oracle Offering Scaled Down Version of Database Machine

Citing customer demand, Oracle has unveiled a half-size version of the HP Oracle Database Machine, its competitor to high-end data warehousing products such as that sold by Teradata. Oracle claims strong demand for its Exadata product line but declines to offer numbers. The HP Oracle Database Machine was co-developed by Oracle and Hewlett-Packard and is part of Oracle's Exadata product line, launched to great fanfare at the OpenWorld conference last year. It initially was available as a rack filled with eight HP DL360 database servers, four Infiniband switches, a storage server grid with 14 servers, and various software products, according to a post made on Thursday to Oracle's Data Warehouse Insider blog.

But now, "due to popular demand, addressing smaller entry points with the same extreme performance on the same technology basis, Oracle is now introducing a smaller system," the blog states. The scaled-down version has four HP DL360 database servers, two switches and seven storage servers and "will provide similar scalability and performance characteristics as the full rack."

"We at Oracle, and our customers, are very excited about this new offering, as it provides a slightly lower entry point for an HP Oracle Database Machine, while still delivering extreme performance," the blog adds.

CEO Larry Ellison dubbed the Exadata line the company's most exciting product family "in many, many years," during an earnings conference call this week, and claimed that the system's performance has been trouncing competitors' products.

But while Oracle President Charles Phillips described the Exadata sales pipeline as "the largest [he's] ever seen in terms of a new product," neither he nor Ellison provided any definitive numbers.

While Exadata promises high-end performance, it has a considerable price tag as well. Oracle's official price list states that the half-sized machine's hardware costs $350,000 (about Rs.1,750 lakh) compared to $650,000 (about Rs. 3,250 crore) for the full version.

But analyst Curt Monash has calculated that once software licenses and likely database options are added to the equation, the list price of a fully loaded, full-sized Database Machine is more than $5.5 million (about Rs. 27.5 crore).

Despite that price tag, it's hard to draw conclusions about the product's success so far, Monash suggested.

While Exadata "is not winning many competitive deals yet," he said, "whether they are making sales into the Oracle loyalist base is a different matter."

Oracle's decision to release a half-sized version is an acknowledgment that in the data warehousing market today, "there's much more unit demand at lower database sizes," Monash said.

The full database machine has either 20TB or 45TB of storage, depending on the type of drives used, according to Oracle's blog post.

Meanwhile, "most specialized analytic DBMS installations run databases under 10TB in size," Monash said.

"Big enterprise data-warehouse integration projects are in some cases being deferred for economic reasons," he added. "Smaller, more tactical projects with rapid payback are less affected."

Oracle is hardly abandoning the type of enterprise that would need the full Database Machine, according to Monash.

"Their most important customers are the biggest and highest-end ones," he said. "For years, Teradata was the only vendor who routinely clobbered Oracle at the high end of the database market. Now Netezza and others are also threats. Exadata is Oracle's reaction. The last thing Oracle wants to do is sacrifice share at the top of the DBMS market. All other objectives are secondary."

Author: Chris Kanaracus @ www.cio.in

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Oracle license sales fell in Q3

Oracle on Wednesday said its third-quarter revenues were $5.45 billion, a 2 percent hike, but net income fell 1 percent to $1.3 billion.

New software license revenues -- a key indicator of business strength -- fell 6 percent to $1.5 billion compared to the same quarter a year earlier.

Cut straight to the key news for technology development and IT management with our once-a-day summary of the top tech news. Subscribe to the InfoWorld Daily newsletter. Also, while software license updates and product support revenues jumped 11 percent to $2.9 billion, services revenues dropped 8 percent to $1.0 billion.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters predicted on average that excluding special items, Oracle would report earnings of $0.32 per share on $5.45 billion in revenue for the quarter.

Oracle slightly beat those expectations, reporting that excluding special items, earnings per share were $0.35 and revenue was $5.5 billion.

Oracle blamed foreign currency valuations for the drop in new license revenues.

"But for currency, we actually sold more new licenses in Q3 of this year than we did in Q3 of last year," CEO Larry Ellison said during a conference call.

Given the global recession, "that is a remarkable achievement," he added.

The quarter's pace of business was typical for Oracle, with many deals closing toward the end, said Chief Financial Officer Safra Catz. "Nothing about that was different," she said.

In typical fashion, Ellison talked up Oracle's position against competitors, characterizing Oracle as an unstoppable powerhouse amid an onslaught of harsh economic headwinds.

"We're better in applications than SAP. In database, we're taking share from Microsoft and IBM," he said. "We're competing more effectively across the board in all our product areas and that's the explanation for Q3, and reason for optimism moving forward." To that end, Oracle is prepping a pair of major new software releases for the coming months, including Oracle Database 11g Release 2 and Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g, said Oracle President Charles Phillips.

Copyright @ 2009 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.

Source: www.tmcnet.com

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Earnings: Oracle profit beats forecast; company to pay 1st dividend

Oracle Corp.'s profit and revenue from new software licenses dipped in the latest quarter, but the business software maker's results came in ahead of Wall Street's tepid forecasts. And in a rare sign of confidence these days, the company declared its first dividend.

Oracle's fiscal third-quarter results, reported Wednesday after the market closed, demonstrated that the company was able to sustain a better-than-expected pace of contract signings even as companies pull back on technology spending.

In the latest period, which covered December through February, Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Oracle said it earned $1.33 billion, or 26 cents per share, versus $1.34 billion, also 26 cents per share, in the year-ago period.

Total revenue was $5.45 billion, a 2 percent increase over last year, though Oracle said sales would have jumped 11 percent without currency fluctuations. Analysts predicted $5.42 billion in sales.

Nike Inc. said its profit slipped in its third quarter on charges related to its acquisition of Umbro PLC and on weaker sales.

The Beaverton, Ore.-based athletic apparel company said Wednesday its net income slipped to $243.8 million, or 50 cents per share, for the quarter ended Feb. 28, compared with $463.8 million, or 92 cents per share, in the same period last year.

Nike's revenue fell 2 percent to $4.4 billion.

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