10g puts Oracle on starting grid

Oracle has announced the next version of its database and application server software, introducing emerging grid technologies into the products for the first time.

Chief executive Larry Ellison launched Oracle 10G at the supplier's Oracleworld user conference in San Francisco this week. The new product is due to be available later this year, but the company has not confirmed a release date or any details of pricing.

The supplier expects its customers to increasingly use its software for managing groups of low-cost, Intel-based servers running Linux to provide aggregated computing resources. Grid software allows different computers connected across a network to share resources such as processors, memory and storage.

Oracle executive vice president Chuck Phillips says current IT infrastructures are inefficient, with servers configured to operate at peak conditions, leaving too much time when they are under-used.

Oracle 10G will balance the workload on any servers in the grid, allowing IT managers to optimise the available computer power. Phillips says payroll systems are an example of applications that undertake intensive processing once or twice a month when wages are paid, but otherwise remain relatively idle.

Using a grid approach, servers can be dedicated to running the payroll system when needed, with the computing power switched elsewhere at other times, he claims.

'It's pretty easy to get sceptical, but we think that the infrastructure has ripened to allow us to build enterprise grids,' said Phillips. 'Now you can solve complex problems with low-cost components.'

Oracle has invested heavily in initiatives such as clustering and Linux, which have paved the way for grid computing, says Philip Dawson, programme director at analyst Meta Group.

'That approach will work fine when the grid is heterogeneous and everything is integrated and trusted. But there are a whole number of issues to resolve before that can apply to a commercial system,' he said.

Dawson says that one of the challenges facing Oracle will be how to define licensing for the use of its database across a grid, and how access will be monitored.

'I don't expect to see commercial grids until at least 2006,' he said.