Oracle has launched its European OracleWorld event in Copenhagen
this week by detailing a new cost saving feature in Release 2 of
its 9i database software and announcing a one-stop-shop deal with
Sun Microsystems.
The software maker also introduced two new services for partners in
the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region and said that many
implementation partners and software makers now support the online
analytical processing (OLAP) functionality in 9i Release 2.
Data warehousing is one of the main topics at OracleWorld
Copenhagen, and Oracle is for the first time talking about a
compression feature that, according to Robert Shimp, vice-president
of database marketing, can cut up to 25% off data warehouse
costs.
Oracle claims 9i Release 2 is unique in that it allows customers to
compress database tables, the part of the database that holds the
actual data. Compressing the tables reduces the size of the
database, which results in savings for customers, as a smaller
database requires less hardware and maintenance, said Shrimp.
Previous versions of Oracle's database software only allowed
customers to shrink the size of the database indexes, a feature it
shares with rival database products. However, the competition is
"years behind" on table shrinking, said Shimp. Release 2 of Oracle
9i Database was announced earlier this month.
Early adopters of the compression technique have been able to
reduce the size of a terabyte of raw data by half, cutting the cost
of storage by 50% and the total cost of their data warehousing
system by 25%, said Shimp.
Only historical data in the database, which according to Oracle is
typically about 70% of data in a data warehouse, is compressed.
Recent data is left uncompressed and fully available, Shimp said.
Companies that use the new technology include France Télécom,
Oracle said.
In another announcement at OracleWorld, Oracle said it is now
possible to get Oracle software preinstalled on systems from Sun
Microsystems. Customers can "get their customised Oracle and Sun
infrastructure up and running in less than a day," Oracle
said.
The offering, under Sun's Customer Ready Systems program, is valid
for Oracle 9i Database, Oracle 9i Application Server and the Oracle
E-Business Suite.
Talking about its partner network, Oracle announced that many
implementation partners and independent software vendors (ISVs)
will be offering products that use OLAP, a feature new to Release 2
of 9i that facilitates analytical usage of data.
Oracle also used OracleWorld to launch the Oracle Partner Source
Network and the Oracle EMEA Migration Factory.
Oracle Partner Source Network is set up as a single point of
contact for all 6,200 Oracle PartnerNetwork members in their
dealings with Oracle. Based in Dublin and available by phone, Web
or e-mail, the Oracle Partner Source Network can handle enquires in
12 European languages.
The Oracle EMEA Migration Factory is a service for software makers
to make their products work with Oracle's 9i Database and 9i
Application Server. The migration can be conducted by Oracle in
India or an Oracle partner on a fixed price basis. This service is
available today in Germany, Finland, France, Denmark and Sweden and
will be available across the EMEA region by the end of August,
Oracle said.
Later this week Oracle is expected to unveil details of Project
Marvel, an HTML-based development system for building portal and
web applications on the 9i platform. The software is available for
free on the Oracle Technology Network.
As it gears up to take on BEA and IBM in the application server
market, Oracle is also using the conference this week to highlight
a number of Oracle 9i Application Server (9iAS) users including
Argo Marches Internationaux, a European fresh food consultant which
has built a European-wide portal for the produce industry based on
Oracle 9iAS.