It seems that 2011 is going to be the year of hyperbole and hype; what with EMC's 'Breaking Records' launch and now Oracle's 'Game Changing' launch. At least EMC did break some records at their event but it is doubtful whether Oracle changed any games with their launch of a technology which was previously announced by IBM and Fuji a year ago.
Yes, Oracle have shipped product first but one suspects that Oracle needed something to announce in the storage space, anything is probably better than the deafening silence around Oracle and storage. And it least to catch some kind of interest, it needed some kind of buzz. However Enterprise Tape capacity increases are never going to set the world alight and nearly always one company's announcement is followed very closely by other Enterprise Tape manufacturer announcing a similar increase.
Oracle seem to be pretty bereft of a real storage strategy at present which is no surprise really as Sun were also fairly bereft of a strategy as well but in this era of integrated stacks is this really a long-term tenable position for Oracle? If they are to really leverage the acquisition of Sun, they need one and they need one fairly soon. There is an obvious solution to Oracle's problem; expensive but obvious. And until Oracle bites the bullet, their announcements will continue to be wind and bluster.
Martin,
are we sure that Oracle strategy needs a storage proposal?
They are pushing EXADATA and EXALOGIC and they are trying to move Sun SPARC customers to this platforms.
Tapes aren’t part of a real strategy but only a simple way to earn more money every year with support contracts and pricey proprietary media!
Actually Oracle is just a software (DB centric) company.
Enrico
If Oracle want to be more than just a database company, they need a spindle to screen strategy. If Oracle want to be the IBM of the 1960s; perhaps they should consider punch-cards as well as tape? If Oracle want to be the Enterprise IT company for 2010 and beyond; they need to do more than they are doing.
I feel that external storage systems just aren’t Oracle priority at the moment. Their cash-cows are db’s, apps and structured data which all work well within the Exadata framework. “Pure storage” simply doesn’t give them the same ROI at the moment.