Oracle anticipates a spur in upgrades to its
grid-enabled Oracle Database 10g this June, when the first patch
set will be released for the new system.
Andrew Mendelsohn, senior vice president of database and server
technologies, said the largest in-production user of the 10g
database is Oracle itself. But he noted that the product began
shipping in January on Unix and Linux, and on Windows in March.
While Mendelsohn could not provide specific information on the
rate of users upgrading to version 10g from previous releases, he
said the release of the patch, which will feature some bug fixes,
should spur upgrades.
Oracle estimated that its installed base for databases is
between 100,000 and 200,000 customers. About 45% are on release 9i,
which came out just before 10g, with the rest on earlier
versions.
"One thing we're seeing is there are a number of customers
planning to go from those older releases straight to 10g,"
Mendelsohn said.
With the 10g release Oracle is touting support for grid
computing, which enables the database to be spread out over
multiple, commodity hardware systems. It also features
self-managing capabilities.
Mendelsohn expected the self-management capabilities to be the
most popular feature when customers begin upgrading, he said. Grid
enablement at customer sites will be a slower process.
"I expect a large percentage of our installed base will be
moving to a grid environment over time. It's going to take a number
of years," he added.
One area of grid that needs more work is the development of
standards, Mendelsohn acknowledged. Oracle and other suppliers need
to develop standards covering issues such as the discovery and
management of components in grid environments,.
Oracle plans to ship Oracle 10g Release 2 in 2005, Mendelsohn
said, although he would not describe the features planned. "It's
basically 10g with some spit and polish added."
Oracle is betting that enterprise business customers will latch
onto grid computing, even though grid has, predominantly, been the
domain of specialised environments such as scientific
applications.
Paul Krill writes for InfoWorld