Oracle and Dell launch global server alliance

Dell and Oracle are to expand their partnership to offer Dell hardware that runs optimised versions of the software giant's products.

The companies will work together to offer integrated hardware and software systems enhanced for Oracle's database products.

The joint offerings will include Oracle Linux, Oracle VM, Oracle Enterprise Manager, as well as Oracle's database, middleware and applications. Both companies will jointly offer support on these systems.

Oracle co-president Mark Hurd said in a video message at the Dell Enterprise Forum in San Jose, California, that both firms have tested, patched and supported these systems to free customers from integration and maintenance tasks so they can concentrate on innovation.

"This allows customers to get integrated solutions and support from Dell, with Oracle support backing their entire solution," Hurd said.

"This partnership with Dell is an extension of Oracle's engineered systems strategy where we simplify IT and reduce integration costs by delivering hardware and software together."

As part of the agreement, Oracle has named Dell a preferred x86 partner, and Dell has crowned Oracle a preferred enterprise infrastructure partner.

"We believe that by working together, Dell will gain significant market share by delivering to its customers an integrated, optimised solution designed to deploy business critical applications. This is just the beginning of a lot of great things to come," said Hurd.

Marius Haas, president of enterprise solutions for Dell, said his company was growing fast in the datacentre and gaining share across the world in its three core businesses.

"In part, this success is due to the fact we are focused on building and optimising Dell infrastructure to help customers run their core mission-critical workloads," he said.

"Today's agreement with Oracle greatly expands this commitment," added Haas.

"By combining Oracle's strong position in the database and business applications markets with Dell's leadership in industry-standard servers, datacenter storage and networking, we're combining the best of both worlds to deliver innovative solutions to customers that deliver superior performance, lower costs and increased value."