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The datacenter convergence conflict
By siliconindia
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Tuesday, 13 October 2009, 19:45 IST
Bangalore: As Oracle is about to close on its acquisition of Sun Microsystems, solution providers in the channel might have found out that Oracle is cozying up to Hewlett-Packard on the subject of datacenter convergence.
At Oracle OpenWorld, Oracle announced the application support for the integrated BladeSystem Matrix from HP, reports Channel Tech Center. The BladeSystem Matrix is an integrated server that combines server, storage and switch components with virtualization under a unified management framework. With this system, HP is looking to head off competition from companies such as Cisco, which has launched a Unified Computing System (UCS) and Intelicloud, which is a startup company that has launched its own namesake version of an integrated server.
The challenge with selling these systems is that they essentially require a forklift upgrade of the server environment. So even though they can lead to a very real drop in the total cost of computing in the datacenter, they require a lot of cash up front investment.
As an alternative approach to lowering the cost of computing, Dell, IBM and Sun have been promoting software alternatives to integrating servers, switches and storage, while companies such as Liquid Computing have been promoting a completely platform independent approach to accomplish the same thing. HP, meanwhile, has placed bets on both approaches in the form of its BladeSystem Matrix and its Insight software for holistically managing datacenter components.
Datacenter convergence is inevitable as the people that pay for datacenters continue to demand a real reduction in the cost of operating them. And if the real cost of running the datacenter is actually reduced, that should free up more money for additional applications and services from solution providers as the single largest cost of running the datacenter, namely headcount, is sharply reduced.
