Oracle has had five months since its $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems to integrate itself with Sun’s storage division. Now, Oracle, like a lot of other IT systems companies, wants to be the CIO’s full-service storage provider — in addition to selling you parallel databases, middleware, virtual machines and lots of business applications. Not to mention Exadata servers, Java networkware and even a data center switch — if you need one.
At the same time, however, Oracle distances itself from the accusation of potential vendor lock-in by offering to support existing open-standards infrastructures and augmenting them with any or all of the above, plus its new Sun and StorageTek storage gear.
These are the key messages in the overall storage and data center strategy Oracle will use for the next several months. However, it remains to be seen whether Oracle can actually walk that tightrope and maintain the credibility it has gained after 33 years in the IT business.
Oracle kicked off its summer Storage Summit series in San Francisco on July 14. Future sites and dates for the summit are Chicago and Denver (both July 15), Milwaukee (July 20), Cincinnati (July 21), Columbus (July 22), Detroit (July 27), Independence, Mo. (July 28), Indianapolis (July 29), Omaha (Aug. 5), Memphis (Aug. 18), and St. Louis (Aug. 24).
To read the original eWeek article, click here: Oracle Outlines Its Storage Strategy to CIOs