HP, Dell To Resell Oracle's Solaris, Linux, And Virtualization Platforms

HP and Dell plan to certify and resell Oracle's Solaris, Linux, and virtualization platforms on their x86-based servers, giving Oracle a chance to expand its operating system and virtualization business even as its own server sales continue to fall.

The move comes a month after Oracle released its own new Intel-based x86-based servers for running those three operating systems.

Oracle on Thursday said Hewlett-Packard and Dell will certify and resell Oracle Solaris, Oracle Enterprise Linux, and Oracle VM, while Oracle will offer a full range of support for its software on those servers.

Customers of those vendors' servers will have full access to Oracle's Premier Support for the three operating systems, including future upgrades, Oracle said.

For Oracle, the new agreements with HP and Dell represent an opportunity to expand its operating system and related software business even as its own server sales continue to fall.

Analyst firm Gartner in May said that, of the top five server vendors, Oracle's Sun business took the biggest hit in server sales during the first quarter of 2010. Oracle’s total server shipments fell 29.5 percent over the first quarter of 2009 last year to 42,528 units, while revenue fell 38.7 percent to just under $600 million.

When Oracle's $7.5 billion acquisition of Sun was finalized in January, Oracle was very clear in its plans to focus its future hardware and software business on integrating the two together while stepping away from the general purpose server business.

Since then, Oracle has dropped its legacy Sun AMD processor-based server line while unveiling new Sun Fire x86 clustered servers based on Intel Xeon 5600 and Xeon 7500 processors targeted mainly at running Oracle Solaris, Oracle Enterprise Linux, and Oracle VM Server for x86.

Oracle did not respond to a request for more information on the deals with HP and Dell.

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