Oracle has been building what it calls Engineered Systems – basically appliances – since it purchased Sun Microsystems Inc. in 2010. Over the years it has built out the industry’s most comprehensive application portfolio, writes Wikibon CTO David Floyer (right) in “Oracle Database Appliance evolves as an Enterprise Private Cloud Building Block.”  While other converged systems offer infrastructure that is very similar, Oracle goes further up the stack, including the database and sometimes the application. And it is aggressive about producing these appliances. Basically, if the problem is large enough, Oracle will build an engineered system to solve it.

The Oracle Database Appliance (ODA) is a specialized, integrated system designed specifically for Oracle database workloads. It is designed as a lower cost, highly integrated alternative to “roll-your-own” bespoke component systems for corporate departments and mid-sized organizations that want the benefits of integration but do not need and cannot afford Exadata-sized systems.

However, writes Floyer, it is more than that. “Wikibon chose the ODA as one of the most advanced platforms on the market today that exhibits most of the true private cloud features as we’ve defined them.” This makes the ODA a strong building block for private and hybrid clouds running Oracle-based applications.

Oracle is moving to take over complete responsibility for:

• Testing, maintaining and updating the complete stack;
• Providing automation, orchestration and ability to deploy self-service;
• Enabling virtualization of server and storage; and
• Providing links to the Oracle public cloud.

Major hard-dollar savings come from operational support, database license and maintenance costs and application maintenance and testing. The ODA’s three-year cost ($900,000) is 28 percent that of an equivalent white box component-built system ($3.2 million). Soft-dollar benefits include faster time to application deployment, which can be significant. Oracle offers on-demand software licensing for Oracle 12c or 11G enterprise editions and features, which allows any even number of cores to be licensed in either virtualized or bare metal implementations.

As a result of the combination of advanced features and significant savings, Wikibon recommends that companies using Oracle should always include the ODA in RFPs when it meets the performance requirements of the application. CIOs should push Oracle to provide improved orchestration and automation capabilities.

Photo Courtesy Oracle Corp.