Ellison launches Oracle enterprise grid computing
Grid computing is the end of the 40-year old "one big computer"

OracleWorld, September 9, 2003

  • Oracle Chairman and CEO Larry Ellison announced Oracle Database 10g and Oracle Application Server 10g.
  • Oracle Enterprise Grid computing runs all applications with capacity on demand, at a lower cost and higher level of fault tolerance and reliability.
  • Ellison portrayed IBM's on demand as financial engineering in contrast to Oracle on demand which is software engineering with a price/performance benefit of 30 to one.

San Francisco In a keynote before a standing-room-only crowd, Oracle's CEO launched the era of enterprise computing with Oracle Database 10g and Oracle Application Server 10g.

After a futuristic laser show, Ellison went back to 1964--the era of the Beach Boys, Mickey Mantle, and big iron. "Forty years ago, IBM invented the 360 mainframe. What's happened in enterprise systems since then? A quest to build bigger and bigger computers," said Ellison

"Last year, Microsoft got into the race--40 years late," said Ellison, referring to a recent 64-processor SQL Server Windows mainframe benchmark. "I think the team Bill sent to IBM to figure out what's next held their map upside down; instead of turning left into IBM research, they turned right into the IBM museum."

Ellison announced the Oracle Enterprise Grid, a smarter alternative to the 40-year-old "one big server." The Oracle grid, according to Ellison, is without the one big server problems--limited capacity, high cost, and a single point of failure. Next he outlined four Oracle Enterprise Grid components--the storage grid, database grid, application server grid, and grid control. "The beauty of the enterprise grid is that our software creates the illusion that it's just one great big computer," said Ellison.

Oracle's grid can tap low-cost Intel blades running Linux, while avoiding the single point of failure of one big server. In a comparison slide, before concluding with a brief Q&A, Ellison highlighted several Oracle grid customers including Electronic Arts, CERN, Oracle University, and Oracle Outsourcing. #