Oracle teams with HP in hardware market

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) -- Oracle, the second-largest software maker, is entering the hardware market for the first time, teaming with Hewlett-Packard (HP) on a pair of new storage server products, the San Francisco Chronicle said on Thursday.

The HP Oracle Exadata Storage Server will help the Oracle expand into the growing market of data warehousing, the paper said.

The server, which HP will produce, also will work with another joint hardware product called the HP Oracle Database Machine, an optimized hardware pack that will combine the Exadata Storage Servers with database computers running Oracle's software, according to the report.

This integration of hardware and software in the Database Machine will help address the growing problem for companies that must analyze terabytes of data from data warehouses, large storage arrays from which companies pull data, the paper quoted Oracle CEO Larry Ellison as saying.

The move pits Oracle against established storage companies like IBM, EMC and Sun Microsystems and plunges the company for the first time into the world of hardware sales.

Ellison said Oracle has been working for three years with HP on the hardware, which is available now for purchase.