Cisco - TABPI

NEWS&ANALYSIS
Sun, Oracle tighten alliance
COMPANIES TO REDUCE
DEPLOYMENT COSTS
By Jeffrey Burt and Lisa Vaas
It departments under
pressure to keep costs
down welcome a move by
Sun Microsystems Inc. and
Oracle Corp. to lower the cost
of deploying the two companies’
software and systems.
Sun, of Santa Clara, Calif.,
and Oracle, of Redwood
Shores, Calif., are tightening
their 20-year-long alliance
with what officials said will
result in a “no finger-pointing”
service and support scenario
for joint customers.
“What this means is you
have absolute, total choice
across the two product lines,
with only one throat to choke,”
said Scott McNealy, president,
chairman and CEO of Sun.
At an event in San Francisco
last week, McNealy and
Oracle Chairman and CEO
Larry Ellison spoke about how
many data centers in the
near future are going to run
smaller servers linked by technology
such as Oracle’s Real
Application Clusters and
running as one large system.
In support of that vision,
Sun has made available two
new low-cost, rack-optimized
servers, the Sun Fire V60x and
V65x. The V60x is a 1U (1.75inch-high)
one- to two-way system
powered by Intel Corp.
2.8GHz Xeon processors that
can run either Red Hat Inc.’s
Red Hat Linux or Sun’s Solaris
x86 Platform Edition. The
entry-level server—which is
aimed at such jobs as Web
serving, e-mail and caching—
also features up to 6GB of
memory and three Ultra320
SCSI hard drives, according to
Sun. The 2U (3.5-inch) V65x
can run one or two 2.8GHz
36 eWEEK n MAY 26, 2003
or 3.06GHz Xeons and comes
with up to 12GB of memory,
six 36GB or 73GB hard drives,
and up to six PCI-X slots,
Sun officials said. In addition,
McNealy said
Sun has formed a
global agreement
with Linux developer
Red Hat.
At the event,
McNealy and Ellison
said Oracle
software will run
with the Solaris
and Linux operating
systems on all
x86 hardware from
Sun. The software
includes everything
from the Oracle9i database
and Oracle9i application
server to Oracle Collaboration
Suite.
The two companies are also
going to ensure that Oracle
software can be automatically
deployed within data centers
powered by Sun’s N1 strategy,
an initiative to virtualize the
data center, enabling the
dynamic management of
Ellison, left, and McNealy, right, are looking to
populate data centers with smaller servers.
resources within the centers.
The two companies will
also integrate Sun’s StarOffice
suite with Oracle’s Collaboration
Suite and will collaborate
on joint marketing and
support programs.
Oracle users have been waiting
a long time for Oracle software
to run on low-cost Sun
boxes, according to Richard
Niemiec, president of the
International Oracle Users
Group and CEO of TUSC (The
Ultimate Software Consultants),
an Oracle consultancy.
“People [are saying that] this is
huge and that it’s about time,”
said Niemiec, in Chicago. “It’s
good for Oracle. They need
to be hardware-agnostic. They
have a large contingent on Sun
[hardware], and they need to
keep that contingent happy.”
Any ground gained at the
lower end of the market will
likely carve away territory now
claimed by Microsoft Corp.’s
SQL Server, Niemiec said.
“It positions Oracle at the
lower end to a much-greater
degree than they were previously,”
he said. “Another benefit
is that many people, for
their main server, have Sun.
For their departmental,
smaller servers, there’s now
potential to consolidate on
Sun as an alternative to SQL
Server.” ´
Cisco beefs up security tools
By Paula Musich
Cisco systems inc. continues to broaden
its portfolio of security management tools
with the introduction of 14 new and
enhanced security management, threat protection
and VPN offerings.
Among the upgraded offerings is the
Cisco IP Solutions Center Version 3.0 Security
Technology Module, which allows users
to set up common configurations for multiple
virtual private network devices from a central
location and push those out to remote sites.
The tool, introduced last week, also allows
the VPN tunnels to be pushed out from a
central location to remote locations, according
to early user Carol Henson, director of IT for
the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Rural
Development, in St. Louis. The organization
is using Cisco IP Solutions Center 3.0 as part
of a rollout of 2,500 VPNs to field offices, replacing
more costly frame relay links.
The module provides an audit trail function,
ensuring that “every VPN we install will be
installed the same way,” Henson said. “If we
have to make a change, we can make it
within the VPN and use [the Cisco Intelligence
Engine 2100 Series] to keep them all in
sync.”
Cisco also introduced Cisco Security Device
Manager Version 1.0, which manages Internetwork
Operating System-based security functions
for Cisco 830- and 3700-series access
routers. CiscoWorks Security Information
Management Solution 3.1 adds enhanced event
scoring, business impact and threat analysis
to the base security event monitoring function.
Version 2.2 of CiscoWorks VPN/Security
Management Solution integrates administrative
control of the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Firewall
and VPN services modules, monitoring
of Cisco intrusion detection systems, and support
for the new Cisco Security Agent. ´