back to article Fujitsu, Oracle ironing out Sparc server deal

Fujitsu and Oracle, newly in the server racket thanks to its Sun acquisition, are working on a new contract covering the development and sale of Sparc-based servers. While Oracle may not be the mood to talk about its future Sparc and x64 server plans, Fujitsu's new president, Masami Yamamoto, wants to look ahead after taking …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    jujitsu on the part of Fujitsu?

    suave, indeed.

  2. Jabro
    WTF?

    Oracle and Fujitsu's silence is so damaging

    I cannot imagine why Oracle and Fujitsu are not being more open and aggressive about spelling out what their plans are for the high end SPARC64 product line. Their silence just confirms customers' worst fears, and plays into their competitors' hands.

    If they don't come out soon with an aggressive, credible roadmap for SPARC, then they might as well announce the SPARC EOL in 2010 and get started trying to transition everyone they can over to Solaris x86 as soon as possible. Good luck.

  3. sdsantini

    what else will Oracle do with the Sparc line?

    No matter what, Oracle should cut their losses on the line - it's not in their core competency.

    The only thing if/that makes any sense is that Fujitsu takes the legacy Sun engineers from Oracle and continue developing the product line. They are already manufacturing the equipment, so they have an investment to make a decision about.

    The win/win is that Oracle lets Fujitsu continue developing and manufacturing the existing line as they see fit until demand drops off, with Oracle collecting a margin. Further, Fujitsu should develop for Oracle a line of appliances customized to their applications so they can keep up with other new merged companies, ie, SAP/Sybase...

    This would allow Oracle to sell the vertical solutions that are competitive, yet not have the hardware risk, and Fujitsu gets the product line, plus a captive product set to expand into.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    SPARC

    ..is a sentimental drag on ORACLE's finances

    ..was the millstone around SUN's neck.

    ..was uncompetitive since about 2000

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    more than just SPARC here

    I could build a great win/win story here about the two companies swapping assets, it would make sense, but Oracle doesn't do win/win. Oracle thinks infrastructure is drag along, that hardware is basically like the database 'market' - driven by higher level software choices. Oracle has far more leverage over existing Oracle-on-SPARC customers (ie the vast majority of M Series systems) to force architecture change to x86 and Fuj knows it. If Oracle takes on the next generation systems, Fujitsu can justify building them. If not, they can't. If Oracle says they'll take on the next generation of Fujitsu SPARC systems and then tell everyone to switch to x86 anyway it actually doesn't cost them that much, and Fuj is screwed anyway, and Oracle knows it. Lower the cost of the 1 processor M Series, build a 2 processor M Series and then Oracle can even get away without the $%&^ing CMT systems. Oracle win, Fujitsu are thrown a scrap in the form of some additional low end volume and get to hang in there for one more generation of SPARC, Oracle remain in complete control of what they pitch to the customer. That would be typical Oracle negotiating style. BTW El Reg needs to add Larry E. to the Bill & Steve icons.

  6. hkannan

    I suppose you mean HAL not HCL

    You said "Then again, Sun might have followed the way of HCL, Ross Technology, and Amdahl, too, and been borged into Fujitsu" - I suppose you wanted to say HAL, not HCL

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    They better

    ...do something innovative or just scale x86 to mainframe-class computing. Now the largest transaction processors in the financial industry move to x86, Linux and C++.

    No more need for any ORACLE/SUN hardware at all. All the SUN business is more or less based on the historical need for Unix servers and the resulting skillbase in the data centers and developer shops.

    But more and more of these people discover or are forced to discover that they can use Linux at much lower cost. And they can get support from several highly competent sources, including IBM.

    If they need mainframe integration, they can run an IBM-supported Linux on SystemZ hardware. Or PowerPC, if they need maximum speed.

    1. Kebabbert

      Jlocke

      "If they need mainframe integration, they can run an IBM-supported Linux on SystemZ hardware. Or PowerPC, if they need maximum speed."

      I take that you confess that IBM Mainframes have dog slow CPUs? That POWER is faster? Or are you talking about PowerPC?

      Anyway, it turns out that Linux does not utilize many cores as well as Solaris does. See for instance latest SAP benchmarks where Solaris 10 scores higher than Linux. Despite Linux uses higher clocked 48 cores and faster RAM sticks the Linux cpu utilization is 87% and Solaris reaches 99%.

      Add insult to injury, Linux is not as stable as Solaris, and Linux has higher support cost than Solaris (may change with Oracle), so I dont see why you should choose Linux before Solaris?

  8. -tim

    Is there hope left?

    I hope their new agreement allows them to build lower end systems. I need something to replace lots of old Solaris 9 servers and since the Netra 210 was killed, there isn't anything useful in either companies lineup.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Go

      IBM or HP x86 servers

      ...running Linux will be the perfect replacement.

      http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/uk/x/

      http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/de/de/sm/WF05a/15351-15351-3896136-3955796-3955796-3956246.html

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