Global CIO: Larry Ellison And IBM Lead Surge In Optimized Systems

Teradata: While Teradata has a long history of offering hardware-software combinations, until two years ago those were exclusively very high-end machines that addressed only a relatively limited market. Two years ago, though, Teradata, in what the company calls its most strategic new-product release in company history, introduced entry-level and mid-range optimized systems that opened up significant new markets for Teradata's highly regarded technology and spurred the company to a new wave of significant growth.

Hewlett-Packard: Within the next two months, HP is planning to introduce a huge family of optimized and integrated systems that will range from mid-market packages to specialized mission-critical applications within the world's largest corporations, HP recently told Global CIO (you can read all about it at Global CIO: Gunning For IBM & Oracle, HP Plans Optimized-Systems Blitz). HP's already got plans to roll out a system optimizing Microsoft's SQL application, and in addition is one of the hardware partners to SAP for a forthcoming high-end analytics machine. HP plans to offer engineered systems for data warehousing, OLTP, business intelligence, Microsoft Exchange,and other applications.

SAP: In a phone conversation this week, SAP CTO Vishal Sikka told me that SAP's powerful new analytics tools are intended for use with in-memory technology and in many cases optimized systems or appliances provide the perfect hardware component: "We see this will often materialize optimally in the form of an appliance, which we will build together with our world-class hardware partners: IBM, HP, Fujitsu-Siemens, and blades from Intel," Sikka said. And then in a shot at Oracle-Sun, he added, "The hardware will be built by the best companies on the planet, not some 3rd-tier company we had to buy to get into the hardware market." That machine, which SAP has dubbed "HANA" for high-end analytical appliance, will come out at the end of November, Sikka said, and will play an intimate role in SAP's quest to become the leading provider of real-time information and business insights to global corporations.

Microsoft: Looking to offer optimized systems for two different types of customers, Microsoft will be going after the enterprise as a key player in the big forthcoming product blitz from HP noted above, and also pursuing cloud service providers with a specialized Azure machine that my superb colleague Charlie Babcock described this way: "The Azure platform appliance is designed to be deployed in an on-premises private cloud in racks of hundreds or thousands of servers. It will run both Windows Server and a software stack that matches what's available in Microsoft's Azure public cloud. In addition to enterprises, the appliance is geared for use by large cloud services suppliers."

So if vendor-side interest is a valid indicator of CIO-side demand, then this optimized-system thing is as powerful and wide-ranging an opportunity as we've seen in this market for some time. Of course, with such innovation come some concerns and questions, such as these:

If something goes wrong, whose throat gets choked? When used in such vital applications as analytics and BI and OLTP, will these engineered systems become the source of vendor lock-in? How do customers ensure that doesn't happen? As more CIOs look to slash their costs of infrastructure to be able to devote more dollars to growth-oriented innovation, don't these full-stack machines represent a step back in the old direction? These are all valid questions, to be sure. But one of the great things about the list above—and its not by any means a complete list of the players—is that it's big and getting bigger, which means lots and lots of competition and innovation and better ideas and a huge focus on customer value. All of that mitigates aggressively against sneaky lock-in tricks and hidden integration messes—and, with a new and potentially huge market looming, these IT vendors should be on their very best behavior from the outset. The Rise of the Machines has definitely begun, and from where I sit it looks like there's a lot of significant advantages in being part of this powerful and business-centric movement. RECOMMENDED READING: Global CIO: Will Larry Ellison Launch A Bidding War With IBM For Netezza? Global CIO: Oracle Launches 'Cloud In A Box' And New Cloud Business Global CIO: Gunning For IBM & Oracle, HP Plans Optimized-Systems Blitz Global CIO: IBM Doubles Down On Red-Hot Optimized Systems Business Global CIO: Microsoft Joins Oracle & IBM In Rise Of The Machines Global CIO: Oracle Reveals Strategy And Customers For White-Hot Exadata Global CIO: IBM Top Product Exec Discusses Strategy, Systems, & Oracle Global CIO: Larry Ellison's Acquisition List: Who's #1? Global CIO: Larry Ellison's IBM-Slayer Is Oracle Exadata Machine Bob Evans is senior VP and director of InformationWeek's Global CIO unit.

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