Oracle has introduced a virtual converged infrastructure appliance as it steps up competition with the likes of IBM, Cisco and HP.
Larry Ellison’s Virtual Compute Appliance is aimed at deploying private clouds and will compete for customers with HP’s Converged System, IBM’s PureSystems and the Cisco Unified Computing System in the enterprise market.
However, Oracle claimed it is the first converged infrastructure vendor to "significantly reduce cost" by combining hardware and software in one such solution.
Its senior VP of Linux and Virtualization Engineering, Wim Coekaerts, said: "Virtual Compute Appliance offers value that other converged infrastructure vendors can’t match. By engineering hardware and software together, Oracle has created an engineered system that’s highly available and extensible even after acquisition.
"We’re already seeing strong response from customers running traditional enterprise applications and from cloud service providers."
The firm said the product offers an integrated system that can run any application as well as supporting cloud services, and that it supports Oracle Solaris, Oracle Linux as well as other Linux offerings and Microsoft Windows applications.
