Oracle and EMC will announce two initiatives intended to make life
easier for joint customers who use Oracle's database and business
applications software at Oracle's AppsWorld show in San Diego this
week.
One of the initiatives aims to let customers make a "clone", or
replica, of Oracle's E-Business Suite 11i without having to take
the applications offline. Such replicas are used for tasks like
testing software patches before they are applied or for offloading
data into a data warehouse.
The companies said they have tested and certified a method for
creating a clone using Oracle's Automatic System Configuration
utility (AutoConfig) and EMC's TimeFinder software.
"AutoConfig typically requires you to go offline. We used
TimeFinder to enable customers to stay online 24/7 and still go
ahead and do the cloning," said Doug Kennedy, Oracle vice-president
of platform alliances.
Through joint engineering and testing work the companies have come
up with a set of "best practices" for using the two products that
avoids much of the tedious labour and disruptions often involved
with such work. A White paper is available at
www.emc.com/emc-oracle.
The companies will also announce a service offering intended to
reduce the time it takes for large customers to deploy an Oracle
database on EMC's storage equipment.
The EMC Database Accelerator Service stems from a partnership
between the companies started last year to co-develop services for
their 25,000 joint customers, said Don Swatil, EMC vice-president
for global solutions.
The service includes design and integration work for setting up a
database and integrating it with EMC's storage gear, Swatil said.
Early indications suggested that the service could cut the time it
took to deploy a database on EMC's hardware by approximately
25%.
"It's a fixed price, fixed-scope offering that's provided by both
companies, and it's pretty much a 50-50 breakdown between the
Oracle and EMC services," Swatil said.
Pricing will vary depending on the size of the database but an
average configuration would be priced at about $30,000 (£18,669).