Oracle announced its Oracle Optimized Warehouse initiative Thursday, a combination hardware and software products aimed at improving performance of data warehouse environments built on the Oracle Database with preconfigured hardware and storage products from Dell and EMC.

In Oracle Optimized Warehouse, Dell PowerEdge servers and EMC Clariion networked storage systems have been validated and tested for optimal performance with Oracle Database, the companies said. Oracle noted that the product contains preinstalled data warehouse and business intelligence capabilities of Oracle Database.

"With the Oracle Optimized Warehouse Initiative, customers no longer need to choose between proprietary data warehouse solutions and Oracle-based solutions custom-built on leading hardware platforms," said Ray Roccaforte, Oracle's VP of data warehousing and business intelligence platform, in a statement. The new offerings enable customers to utilize the prebuilt database product out of the box.

Oracle said the Oracle Optimized Warehouse, which is now available from Dell, is supported as a single product, even though it consists of an integrated prebuilt database, storage, and server system.

Rick Becker, VP of solutions for Dell's product group, said Dell anticipates building on its relationship with Oracle and EMC to help customers scale Oracle Optimized Warehouse applications as needed. EMC has been supplying hardware to Dell for several months.

"The long-standing collaboration among EMC, Dell, and Oracle enables us to help customers simplify the implementation of a well-designed data warehouse and easily expand it to meet their business needs," said Mike O'Neill, EMC's VP of technology alliances, in a statement.

Oracle indicated its Oracle Optimized Warehouse is targeted at data marts, enterprise data warehouses, and BI applications. Oracle said it offers reference configurations for customers who prefer the flexibility of configuring their own data warehouse platforms rather than prebuilt configurations.