Oracle To Update App Server For Grid Computing

The new Oracle 10G Application Server also will unify data integration, EAI and B2B integration functionality in the product, said John Magee, Oracle's vice president of application server marketing.

Oracle will unveil--but not ship--its 10g application server at OracleWorld, which will kicks off in San Francisco Sept. 7, Magee said. Oracle will unveil ship dates and pricing for the product at that time.

CRN previously reported that Oracle is tweaking its next product line--branded 10G and including Oracle's application server, database and enterprise manager--to take advantage of the emerging grid-computing model (see story).

Grid computing distributes workloads across multiple PCs and servers, which poses unique management and monitoring problems that many vendors, such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Sun, are trying to solve through software designed to keep track of distributed applications and information.

The 10G application server's new management features will allow solution providers to automate the installation, configuration and setup of system software on different servers, making it easy to provision software assets, Magee said.

Similarly, the product's new monitoring capabilities will allow those keeping track of IT systems to monitor services levels of various applications running, Magee said. This will be especially helpful to hosted services providers that have service-level agreements with customers that must be maintained, he said.

Oracle also will converge EAI, B2B integration and Web services standards such as RosettaNet into its application server so companies can build composite applications that pull together disparate data from multiple applications, Magee said.

Though IDC ranked Oracle third among application server vendors, with 12 percent of the market's revenue in 2001, industry observers have said the company's numbers may not be entirely accurate because the application server is distributed for free with its database and isn't necessarily used in all cases.

Solution providers, too, said IBM WebSphere and BEA WebLogic are the most widely deployed application servers in the market. Oracle's application server is used primarily in shops that already deploy Oracle's database and applications because the application server integrates seamlessly with other Oracle products, they said.