Oracle put the boot into IBM’s Power Systems last month but it may find its users are unimpressed.
Oracle launched a new programme called Exa Your Power at its OpenWorld conference in San Francisco. The idea is to wean Oracle database users off their AIX-flavoured Power Systems hardware with proof-of-concept promises of 15 times better performance on its new Exadata X5 boxes.
But anecdotal evidence would suggest that in the real world the Oracle/Power combo is pretty hard to beat.
Take Canadian computer services company Celero, for example. Founded in 2003, the firm provides IT solutions for hundreds of credit unions and financial institutions. It runs its solutions on Oracle on AIX and recently upgraded from Power6 hardware to new Power System S822 servers.
In a report by IBM, Dale McGowan, enterprise architect at Celero, says: “We’ve practically doubled per-core performance and can now draw on up to 4.5 TB of memory. These enhancements mean we can process and deliver data to the business faster than ever before.”
What’s more, by working with IBM Global Services and chucking brand new storage and HA gear into the mix, the company negotiated a 30 per cent discount off its previous IT deal.
Celero IT architect David Kornell says: “Since refreshing our IBM system landscape, we have reduced data latency from two to three milliseconds to 200 microseconds. The result is a ten-times boost to Oracle database performance on average. We have also seen an across-the-board improvement in batch runs for all clients of approximately 35 to 40 percent.
“As Oracle databases form such an important part of our IT environment, the improved responsiveness has delivered a valuable boost to efficiency for Celero, our clients and their end-customers. In fact, we have been able to boost performance for all teller-level transactions by approximately 25 to 30 percent, and have seen the same improvement ininternet banking transactions.”