HP, EMC Partner With Oracle On Private Cloud Computing

HP and Oracle have announced their combined effort to deliver hardware that runs Oracle business software in a private cloud environment. It's one of a number of announcements by tech companies working with Oracle at the annual Oracle Open World convention in San Francisco. Storage vendor EMC is also announcing a number of new consulting services intended to help customers move their Oracle applications and EMC storage into a private cloud.

Private cloud computing is getting a lot of attention these days in the tech industry because of the belief that enterprises are more interested in creating cloud computing only within their own data centers rather than subscribe to a public cloud service outside their own organization. To establish the private cloud systems, HP includes what it calls Cloud Maps that enable system administrators to establish a catalog of application services for business units to sign up for themselves.

The HP system will include HP BladeSystem Matrix server technology, StorageWorks storage and HP Cloud Service Automation software. These systems will come preloaded with one of three Oracle software stacks: PeopleSoft; the Oracle e-Business Suite; and Oracle Fusion Infrastructure. The HP system running PeopleSoft wiil be available in October, but the e-Business and Fusion system not till later this year. The HP-PeopleSoft system will sell for "under $700,000," although that will not include the cost licenses for the Oracle licenses, said Kevin Lyons, director of marketing for the enterprise servers, storage and networking solutions alliance at HP.

Also in partnership with Oracle, EMC has announced a new portfolio of consulting services under its EMC Consulting and EMC Proven Solutions to help their customers run Oracle applications in a private cloud. As virtualization is the key technology behind cloud computing, the partnership also involves interoperability with VMware, whose vSphere product manages virtualization in private clouds. The platform is also aimed at integrating EMC storage technology and Oracle apps to reduce storage costs, such as EMC Unified Storage and Oracle Database 11g, or leveraging EMC's Backup and Recovery system for Oracle 11g online transaction processing software.

Highlighting industry partnerships at the Oracle Open World convention comes amid high-profile tensions between Oracle and one of those partners, HP. Mark Hurd, the recently ousted CEO of HP, will be speaking Monday at Oracle Open World in his first public appearance as the new president of Oracle. Hurd was forced out of HP Aug. 6 in the wake of reported expense report discrepancies related to his relationship with a female marketing contractor. Hurd was quickly hired by Oracle whose CEO Larry Ellison, publicly criticized HP's personnel blunder. HP is suing Hurd to protect HP trade secrets that he knows. While that may have garnered a lot of media coverage, fundamentally the partnership between the two companies is unaffected, said Mike Crowsen, vice president of the Oracle Alliance at HP. "The relationship is just fine. We have a great relationship with Oracle and we drive a lot of business together," said Crowsen in an interview.