Oracle, Dell in software deal for servers :: Namibia Internet Gateway cc ::

Articles: Oracle, Dell in software deal for servers

Posted by admin on Wednesday, April 07, 2004 - 04:23 AM

Computer maker Dell will begin selling Oracle database software pre-installed on its low-cost servers, the two companies announced Tuesday.
The move is designed to boost sales to small and medium-size businesses and step up competition with rivals such as software giant Microsoft and server makers IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems. Round Rock, Texas-based Dell said database servers costing less than $10,000 account for $460 million a year in sales, a total that is expected to climb to $1 billion annually over the next two years, said Chief Executive Michael Dell. Dell said it controls about 22 percent of that market. The two companies have sold about 30,000 Dell servers that run software from the Redwood Shores company, up from about 15,000 a year ago, according to Dell. But until now, the software came separately. The Dell servers bundled with Oracle software will start at $4,108. The announcement was an extension of agreements by the two companies over the past few years to work more closely together. ``We have no distribution agreement like this with any other partner except for Dell,'' Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison said during the conference call. Analysts said the agreement would have little effect on total sales at a large company like Oracle. But it is part of Oracle's push for ``grid computing'' in which customer are urged to use groups of smaller, less expensive machines for complex tasks, said Jonathan Eunice, principal analyst for research firm Illuminata. ``The big news is that Oracle has embraced this distributed model for doing databases,'' he said.

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