Hurd: SAP HANA isn't 'even comparable' to Oracle's in-memory technology

While SAP has made no secret of its desire to lure customers running Oracle databases over to its own HANA in-memory platform, any doubt that Oracle would fight back has been erased.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison unveiled an upcoming in-memory option for Oracle's recently released 12c database on Sunday, a bit more than two years after HANA went into general availability. And on Monday, co-President Mark Hurd said emphatically that Oracle customers would be best served by staying put.

"I don't like it when Exadata or the in-memory options get compared with SAP HANA," Hurd said at a press conference during the OpenWorld conference in San Francisco on Monday. "I don't think it's even comparable. HANA has to be programmed. What we told you about [Sunday] has nothing to do with that. You're not rewriting anything. I refute the thesis that they're comparable."

Putting it more bluntly, Hurd said, "Forget them."

Hurd repeated Ellison's assertion that Oracle customers can simply "flip a switch" once the in-memory option is available, and find their analytic and transactional applications running a whole lot faster.

The in-memory option is now in a "pre-beta" stage of development and will be released some time next year, said Andy Mendelsohn, senior vice president of database server technologies, during a keynote address earlier Monday.

Hurd was also quick to stress that Oracle has had in-memory capabilities such as the TimesTen caching software for a while now.

He declined to reveal pricing for the upcoming in-memory option, which is likely to be a key lever of opportunity for Oracle to retain database customers who are interested in SAP HANA.

While the in-memory option obviously won't be free of charge, Oracle could apply its traditionally steep discounts off list price and make a compelling case for customers to stick with its database platform rather than undergo a potentially more expensive and risky move to HANA. In turn, Oracle's pricing for the in-memory option could force SAP itself to trim HANA's cost.

Also, while the in-memory option isn't available just yet, using history as a guide, most Oracle database customers running version 11g won't be upgrading to 12c any time soon, preferring to let others take the risk of working out any remaining kinks. That means Oracle has plenty of time to make its case to existing customers.

Overall, the competitive fires between Oracle and SAP seem freshly stoked, evidenced by the tone of a response to Hurd's remarks from Vishal Sikka, who heads up all development at SAP.

"Well, they are right that it is not comparable to HANA," Sikka said in an emailed statement. "The in-memory option they announced completely misses the point because the column store is read-only, and therefore it is a redundant replica of data in the row store, which means redundant storage and at least 5x larger size."

"Plus, it hasn't actually been released yet, so please come back and talk to us when it is available," Sikka added.

There are now 2,000 HANA customers globally, with more than 300 of them interested in running SAP's Business Suite on the platform, according to an SAP spokesman. More than half of all HANA deployments are for non-SAP applications, SAP said.

An SAP spokesman could not say on Monday how many HANA projects today involve successful switches from Oracle.

Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris' email address is Chris_Kanaracus@idg.com

Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for the IDG News Service.
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Oracle's next 'engineered system' to involve virtualization

Oracle is preparing to roll out the latest member of its family of “engineered systems” that combine software and hardware, with the upcoming product focused on virtualization.

The company will discuss the new system on Aug. 13, during a webcast featuring Wim Coekaerts, senior vice president of Linux and virtualization, according to an announcement on Oracle’s website.

No proper name for the new machine was listed in the post, or a specific general-availability date. An Oracle spokeswoman said Wednesday that no further information was available at this time.

Customers who buy the virtualization appliance will be able to “install and deploy [their] virtual infrastructure in just hours,” according to the blog post. The system “provides a converged infrastructure powered by Oracle VM server virtualization and Oracle Virtual Networking, dramatically enhancing data center operations,” it adds.

Benefits include lower costs, higher service levels and the ability to support “a mix of applications and operating systems,” according to the post.

Oracle’s Virtual Networking data center fabric is based on technology it acquired through last year’s purchase of Xsigo. In April, Oracle announced OVN support for its SPARC T5, T4 and M5 servers, as well as the Solaris OS on both x86 and SPARC platforms.

Since entering the hardware business through the acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Oracle has seen hardware revenue fall consistently, but the company maintains it is focused on selling engineered systems, which carry higher profit margins than commodity servers. Company officials say Oracle is poised to see hardware revenue growth in its current fiscal year.

So far, the first engineered system Oracle released, the Exadata database machine, seems to be the most successful. Other systems include the Exalogic application server box and Exalytics analytics appliance.

Earlier this year, Oracle introduced a leasing program for Exadata and other systems in the family, an option it said could give customers the ability to save money over a straight purchase depending on their usage patterns.

The program’s monthly pricing would help customers eliminate large up-front capital expenses, and customers also have the ability to scale up resources as needed, giving them an opportunity to run a private IaaS (infrastructure as a service) inside their data centers, Oracle said. The upcoming virtualization appliance would seem to fit nicely into the IaaS scenario as well.

Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for the IDG News Service.
More by Chris Kanaracus

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