Oracle 10G: More Than Just A Database

At OracleWorld in San Francisco this month, the company will continue to beat the grid-computing drum and hone in on its upcoming Oracle 10G brand for database, application server and related tools and management systems.

"This will be the time where Oracle will say, 'You know what, folks? We really do have a stack. Stop thinking about it as a database. We have a lot of what you need, from the operating-system kernel out to the client,' " said one source close to the company. "What this really does is expand the role of Oracle out beyond the center of the data to the app server but also the integration middleware and management on top of that."

That strategy, whether explicitly stated or not, puts Oracle partners, notably Veritas Software, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and BMC Software,in the vendor's crosshairs.

Oracle Chairman and CEO Larry Ellison has long maintained that customers should get more from the vendor and has signaled that a lot of what the storage management companies do now will come from Oracle in the future. In fact, he pretty much stated his plans via a satellite address at least years' OracleWorld. Sources said the 10G rollout will start delivering these promised storage and systems management perks.

"Veritas could be a major casualty of this. Part of [Oracle's] grid message is automated storage management," another source said. "The message from Oracle will be that no volume management or file-system management is needed."

An Oracle partner said he was not sure who would be hurt more by this move. "If I were to choose people to get into coopetition with, I'm not sure I'd want to put EMC, Veritas, HP, BMC, IBM and Microsoft all on that list," he said.

An Oracle spokeswoman would not comment on OracleWorld specifics but acknowledged the company plans to build on previously stated strategies and put them into a road map or vision statement.

Sources said the 10G product rollouts are not expected until late this year at the earliest. The spokeswoman declined to comment on timing.