This paper highlights the value and benefits Oracle partners bring to IT implementations through the global Accelerate program—a fixed-scope/fixed-price approach that ultimately lowers costs to customers and speeds time to value. The realities of today's global business environment and challenging economic fluctuations have forced companies to rethink the way they handle their IT implementations. Supply chain and distribution management has become more complex than ever. Yet the tools large enterprises use to manage these aspects of their businesses have traditionally been costly. And business buyers have learned the hard way that the “real” costs associated with IT implementations involve much more than the software itself. Request Free!

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This IDC white paper discusses how the HP-Oracle Accelerate partnership brings together the Oracle Accelerate program that provides industry-specific solutions addressing the needs of midsize businesses, HP's portfolio of server and storage infrastructure as well as service offerings targeted to midsize companies, and the go-to-market expertise and customer reach of both vendors' partner channels. The initiative leverages the complementary nature of each vendor's offerings and the best practices each vendor brings to the table in developing and delivering technology and solutions for midsize businesses. It also leverages the expertise of the channel partners, who already play a key role for midsize customers by providing the additional expertise many midsize firms require to supplement their IT staff. Sponsored by: HP and Oracle Written by: IDC Request Free!

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The research finds that the use of more advanced virtualization technology, along with increasingly sophisticated systems management tools that manage both the guest environments and the virtualization engines themselves, can further extend the benefits of virtualization significantly. An optimally managed or "advanced virtualization" infrastructure, described as an infrastructure that includes penetration of virtualized servers of more than 25%, storage virtualization, and the use of systems. Request Free!

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When you’re trying to figure out if virtualization is right for your business, or which platform to choose, it’s crucial to understand virtualization costs.

There are the obvious costs, which include software, hardware and labor. Then there’s the hidden costs: network and storage hardware upgrades, security, management and training.

In its unending pursuit to discredit all things Microsoft, VMware has brought up another important cost to consider: support.

By now you should know the back story. Microsoft says Hyper-V is cheaper than VMware. VMware says Microsoft is using fuzzy math. Microsoft says, “Nuh-uh!” VMware says, “Yuh-huh!” On and on it goes.

In VMware’s latest retort, they take Microsoft to task about its virtualization support costs. Both VMware’s Production SnS and Microsoft’s Software Assurance cost 25% of license price. But, as VMware points out, Software Assurance limits the number of support incidents, while Production SnS offers unlimited support.

Depending on your organization’s needs, Microsoft’s support may be just fine — and cheaper than VMware. Either way, support costs are definitely something you need to consider when you calculate return on investment for virtualization projects.

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Oracle is, as we say here in Boston, wicked fah behind in the virtualization market. Building a strong, integrated virtualization portfolio is the best way — and maybe the only way — for the company to catch up.

The Sun acquisition brought lots of hype about the future of Oracle-Sun virtualization. Now, after months of talk, we’re starting to see some actual work.

Oracle is certifying Sun’s Solaris 10 as a guest OS in Oracle VM 2.2.

The Oracle virtualization strategy focuses on integration across the company’s vast hardware and software stack. No other vendor can provide so much, from the servers to the applications to the hypervisor to the operating system. But the key is, they all have to work together and talk to each other.

Oracle VM support for Solaris, the popular UNIX OS for Sun’s SPARC systems, is a solid first step in that direction.

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Novell is jumping on the KVM bandwagon.

The company is developing a KVM hypervisor called AlacrityVM, as virtualization.info points out. The move follows in the footsteps of Red Hat, Novell’s open source rival, which moved from Xen to KVM with its latest release, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4.

KVM is still a relatively unproven enterprise technology with a very small user base. Its biggest advantage over Xen, the leader in Linux virtualization, is that it is built into the Linux kernel. And that’s just not enough of a reason to switch for most people.

The proprietary virtualization platforms, VMware and Hyper-V, are far and away the market leaders. Behind them are the Xen platforms, led by Citrix XenServer but also including Oracle VM and others.

Red Hat and Novell are even further behind. They really have nothing to lose, so they both can afford to take a shot on KVM. If the technology catches on, they can ride the wave and prosper. If not, they won’t be much worse off.

For more on Linux virtualization trends, check out this Xen vs. KVM face-off between experts Andi Mann and Sander van Vugt.

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