Oracle, Dell Pair Up On Database Server Bundle

Dell will offer the Oracle 10g Standard Edition One database on some of its servers for as little as $4,000, Dell Chairman Michael Dell said in a conference call hosted with Oracle CEO Larry Ellison Tuesday afternoon.

Oracle 10g Standard Edition One is limited for use on single machines with one or two processors. (More on Oracle 10g.)

A Dell/oracle bundle is available now with Red Hat Enterprise Linux starting at $4,108, the companies said. The PowerEdge 2600 and 2650 servers will be available with the database and Red Hat Linux or Windows Server 2003 later this year.

The companies already have joint marketing programs in place and claim to have won 30,000 joint customers over the past two years.

Some observers, however, said the dynamic duo may not have much luck pushing database servers in the SMB market.

"Of course it's great to get distribution through a big entity [like Dell], but the reality is that the VAR channels that are established in SMBs are very closely associated and tied to applications, and that's where Microsoft dominates," said Mark Shainman, senior analyst with The Meta Group.

"When organizations buy specific accounting applications, what they find more often than not is that the VAR or the ISV will have that application plus the database. Microsoft's strong established VAR channel in SMB gives it a huge advantage," he added.

On the flip side, delays to Microsoft's much-ballyhooed next-generation Yukon database give Oracle a chance to entrench its 10g database and Real Application Clustering in accounts and maybe make a run at Microsoft's installed base, Shainman added.

Earlier this year when it released the 10g product family, Oracle announced a bundle of RAC clustering on its midlevel 10g Standard Edition Database. RAC is otherwise sold as a $20,000-per-CPU option for the pricier Enterprise Edition of the database.

While Ellison mentioned the word "exclusive" several times on the call, Dell has sold and will continue to sell Microsoft software on its machines, including the Small Business Server, one version of which includes Microsoft SQL Server. "It's about customer choice and providing value. [Oracle 10g Standard Edition One] will be priced very competitively and will have great brand appeal with large portions of the market. This and Small Business Server aren't necessarily exact competitors," Dell said.

The Dell deal is global and includes the Oracle database on Windows and Linux servers.