Unisys Helps Oracle, Microsoft Team Up

Much to the delight of joint customers, Unisys is
playing peacemaker between rivals Oracle and Microsoft.

Engineers from Unisys and Oracle are
now working together to make sure Oracle applications can run on
Windows-based systems, the companies said Monday.

The Unisys, Oracle partnership is expected to certify the latest
applications and hardware including Oracle 10g running on Unisys servers
with Microsoft’s Windows Server 2003. Oracle said it has already tested
some of the developments in its laboratories.

The historical bickering between the two software rivals is legendary. Oracle’s CEO Larry Ellison once said the only things worth anything at Microsoft are the IE browser, Microsoft Office and
some games. Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, was quick to point out that Oracle’s programs like NC and “Raw Iron” are yet more examples of a company behind the times.

Researchers said they were able to model the enhancements on a Unisys
ES7000 server powered by Intel Itanium 2 processors. And in one case
they claimed to have broken some old benchmarks on a Unisys ES7000 Aries
420 Enterprise Server with 16 Intel Itanium 2 1.5 GHz processors on
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Datacenter 64-bit Edition, Oracle Database
10g with Oracle Automatic Storage Management.

“The ability to maintain and integrate Oracle applications with
enterprise Windows-based systems means that IT managers are no longer
locked into particular configurations and application sets,” Donald
Montgomery, a director of strategic programs at Unisys said in a
statement.

Partners are also convinced that Oracle is doing the right thing.
Wetherill Associates (WAI), Calgary Co-operative Association Limited and
the Nevada Department of Public Safety, which are participating in the study, chose Unisys and Oracle to run on Windows.

Wetherill, for example, said it needed to consolidate operations as
it approached an acquisition and decided to move from three Sun
Unix-based servers onto two Unisys ES7000s. The company needed to power
its Baan ERP software, running Oracle’s 9I database. As a result, WAI
got improvements as much as 400 percent on certain applications over its
old Sun system.

“Customers like Wetherill are searching for more cost effective,
non-RISC solutions to support their mission critical applications —
solutions that will elegantly support their existing software
architectures,” Montgomery said.

Oracle and Unisys said they would hold seminars for customers around the world to demonstrate the ease of migrating Oracle implementations to Intel-based systems.

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