IBM Buys Guardium
IBM today announced the acquisition of Guardium, who are based in Waltham, Mass. This is a very exciting acquisition for IBM Information Management. The combination of IBM and Guardium technology is already helping many organizations safeguard data, monitor database activity and reduce operational costs by automating regulatory compliance tasks. The monitoring capabilities of Guardium’s technology also detect fraud and unauthorized access via enterprise applications such as an organization’s ERP, CRM or Data Warehousing solutions. You can get more details from the IBM press release at IBM Acquires Guardium.
IOD EMEA 2010 – Call for Speakers
The IBM Information On Demand EMEA 2010 conference will be held in Rome next year between Tue 18 May and Fri 21 May. The Call for Speakers is now open. Make sure to submit your proposals to speak at the IOD EMEA conference at http://www-01.ibm.com/software/uk/data/conf/programme/call-for-speakers.html. The deadline for proposals is 29 Jan 2010.
Using DB2 pureScale to Eliminate Over-Provisioning of Database Software
DB2 pureScale created quite a stir at the IBM Information on Demand conference. A number of people wanted to know more about how to use the “on-demand capacity” aspect of DB2 pureScale. I thought you would be interested to hear how some clients plan to use DB2 pureScale. I have anonymized the company names and removed any specific details about environments due to the early nature of the engagements/discussions:
- Recently, the “business” people at a US airline wanted to implement a big promotion. They built the promotion, only for the IT department to inform them that the systems would not handle the increased transactional workload, and so they cancelled the big promotion. The problem wasn’t that they could not add capacity to their systems. They could. They were using a non-IBM database system by the way. The problem was that adding database nodes to their non-IBM database cluster is a non-trivial project. And then, when you consider all the factors, it was questionable whether it made sense to remove those database nodes after the promotion. Well, this airline are now quite excited about DB2 pureScale’s ability to easily add and remove capacity. This is made possible because DB2 pureScale does not require that your applications are cluster-aware and does not impose best practices of partitioning your data across the nodes in the cluster. DB2 pureScale is truely transparent to applications. When this airline needs additional capacity, they simply add one or more logical partitions (LPARs) of DB2 pureScale to handle the additional capacity, and then remove them when they are no longer needed. They pay for the additional DB2 capacity only for the duration of the promotion.
- We are currently engaged with several large retailers. These retailers typically engage in capacity planning projects every six months or so. As part of this exercise, they forecast their needs for the subsequent two or three years. These retailers determine their peak workloads, add a cushion, and then provision the necessary hardware, software, and storage. The thing is, given the nature of the retail business, much of the capacity they provision is unused for most of the year. These retailers buy a lot of hardware, and license a lot of software for that hardware, just to handle peak workloads during “busy periods”. They have to pay for all of this capacity even when they do not use it during the “normal periods”. Because DB2 pureScale has daily-based pricing and because it is so easy to add and remove capacity, many retailers can now provision the software on-demand and only pay software license fees for the capacity they actually use. (Note that this lowers software costs, not hardware costs.) These companies are forecasting that using DB2 pureScale to add and remove capacity on-demand will free up significant amounts of IT budget.
- A large insurance company is talking to IBM about being able to handle large volumes of transactions at short notice. For instance, the insurance company needs to be able to process a high number of transactions after a particularly damaging hurricane or tornado. However, they cannot accurately predict the severity or timing of these natural events. As such, their approach has been to provision for the worst case scenario. But doing this has resulted in a large amount of their IT budget being tied up in servers and software that is not being used most of the time. Now DB2 pureScale allows them to recapture a significant amount of the IT budget that is spent on database licensing and maintenance and invest it in supporting the business in new and innovative ways that help them get ahead of the competition.
- It seems obvious now, but I didn’t realize that telecommunications companies encounter large spikes in transactional workload during holidays. All those calls to family and friends generate a lot of transactions on the back end. It should not surprise you that DB2 pureScale’s ability to add or remove capacity on-demand is generating a lot of interest from telecoms providers. Of course, the continuous availability enhancements in DB2 pureScale are also very important for telecoms providers. Again, the primary benefit for these companies is the cost savings involved in not paying for extra capacity when you are not actively using that capacity.
DB2 High Availability Licensing Explained…
There’s another great article from Paul Zikopoulos that you should know about… it explains in plain English all aspects of licensing DB2 for Linux, Unix, and Windows in high availability configurations. This is the perfect article if you are implementing a high availability configuration and don’t have time to read through the announcement letters, licensing sheets, PLETs, and so on. You can read the article at Licensing distributed DB2 9.7 servers in a high availability (HA) environment
New Redbook: Oracle to DB2 Conversion Guide
There is a lot of interest in the compatibility features that make it easy to move from Oracle Database to DB2. These features include native support for the PL/SQL procedural language, new data types, scalar functions, improved concurrency, built-in packages, OCI, SQL*Plus, and more. IBM has just published a Redbook that describes these features, provides best practices for moving to DB2, and describes how to handle common scenarios. You can download the Redbook from Oracle to DB2 Conversion Guide: Compatibility Made Easy
PS. Did you know that more than 500,000 IBM Redbooks are downloaded every month!
DB2 Editions Explained…
Are you confused by what’s in the various editions of DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows? If you are, Paul Zikopoulos has updated his popular developerWorks articles with the latest product updates. Paul describes the features in each edition, and even includes a nice table that compares the editions side-by-side. You can read the articles at Which distributed edition of DB2 9.7 is right for you? (With a dash of DB2 9.8 pureScale) and Compare the distributed DB2 9.7 database servers.
Presentation for Smackdown: IBM DB2 vs. Oracle Database
I delivered a session titled “Smackdown: IBM DB2 vs. Oracle Database” at the IBM Information on Demand Conference in Las Vegas a little more than a week ago. It is a business case analysis of IBM DB2 and Oracle Database on distributed systems. Since the session, I have had a large number of requests for the charts from attendees, so I thought I would also post the presentation here…
The DB2Night Show
Scott Hayes and Database-Brothers Inc. (DBI) have put together an informative and fun show for DB2 users. Rebecca Bond’s top 10 security tips, taped on location at different New Orleans landmarks, is just one example of why this show is so compelling. And the good news is that Scott is currently working on a number of upcoming episodes. Upcoming show topics include application development tools, comparisons with Microsoft SQL Server, the DB2 workload manager, snapshot reviews, and much more. Make sure to check out the shows at http://www.dbisoftware.com/db2nightshow/.
New Redbook: MySQL to DB2 Conversion Guide
IBM Redbooks are retail-quality books that are available for free on the Web. If you haven’t come across IBM Redbooks, you should visit the IBM Redbooks Web site. There are a multitude of topics covering the entire IBM portfolio and beyond. Angela Carlson and Whei-Jen Chen have just published a new book titled the MySQL to DB2 Conversion Guide. This book shows that, with the proper planning and guidance, converting from MySQL™ to IBM® DB2® is relatively straight forward. It describes all the steps involved, including how to enable applications to use DB2 instead of MySQL. This book also includes the best practices in conversion strategy, conversion tools, porting steps, and practical conversion examples.
DB2 at the Information On Demand Conference
The IBM Information on Demand conference is fast approaching. It is being held on 25-29 October in Las Vegas. I’m especially excited this year because Malcolm Gladwell is a keynote speaker. For people with an interest in DB2, there is an exciting line-up of activities and sessions. Of course, there is the usual strong line up of hands-on labs, as well as the ability to get certified on DB2 and related products. As regards the sessions, here are some personal recommendations:
- Session 2309 IBM DB2 Trends and Directions Keynote
Sal Vella—Vice President of Development for IBM DB2 and Warehousing on Linux, UNIX and Windows—talks about the direction of DB2 for LUW. - Session 1428 Smackdown: IBM DB2 versus Oracle Database
This session presents a business case examination of the total cost of ownership for IBM DB2 and Oracle Database. - Session 2248 Enabling Oracle Applications on DB2: Client Success Stories
DB2 now allows you to run applications developed for Oracle Database on IBM DB2 virtually unchanged. In this session, three users will recount their experiences with these features. - Session 2549 Databases and Cloud Computing Panel
Clients, partners, and IBM employees talk about experiences and best practices with IBM databases and cloud computing. - Session 2818 Cost/Benefit Case for SAP Enterprise Migration to IBM DB2
Find out how DB2 not only reduces the cost of software, but also delivers cost savings in storage and server infrastructure and reduced administration costs.
Here are some useful DB2-related links for the conference:
Sun and Oracle TPC Price/Performance Tactics Revealed
Last week, Sun and Oracle announced a new TPC-C benchmark result that delivers 7,717,510 tpmC with a price performance of $2.34 USD/tpmC*. Here are a couple of things about that result that you may not be aware of:
- The Sun/Oracle benchmark result does not use perpetual software licenses
- The Sun/Oracle benchmark result uses a Web-based incident support contract
As part of the announcement of this benchmark result, Oracle compared their result to the IBM TPC-C result with $2.81 USD/tpmC**. However, this may not be an apples-to-apples comparison because the IBM result includes pricing for 24×7 support, upgrade protection, and perpetual licenses; the Oracle result does not include any of these features. If you include 24×7 support, upgrade protection, and perpetual licensing, you’ll find that the IBM result they refer to actually provides 13% better price/performance compared to Oracle’s latest TPC-C result. Let’s see why this is so…
When Oracle prepares TPC-C benchmark results, they typically use a special license called the Oracle Term License (denoted by the ‘Unlimited Users for 3 Years’ text below):
The Oracle Term License is not a perpetual license, like the software license that organizations typically purchase. Instead, it is like a lease. This term license for three years costs 45% less than a perpetual license. After the three year period, you no longer own the software. At that stage, to keep using the software, you either have to purchase the software for an additional term or purchase a perpetual license. To truely compare this result with TPC-C results that use perpetual licenses, like the IBM results, you need to do some math with the Oracle Database license costs.
When it comes to support, things get a little more interesting. First of all, you should note that the cost of support for a term license is the same as the cost of support for a perpetual license. If you have a look at the Oracle Web site and do some math, the costs for support work out to be more than 40% of the term license cost. But, support costs for this benchmark are not more than 40% of the software license costs. They are actually a little more than 1% of the software license costs.
You see, for this benchmark and many others, Oracle uses something called the Oracle Incident Server Support Package (OISP). The OISP is a support package that has no telephone support. Instead, it allows you up to 10 Web-based incident requests per server (that expire within one year). What’s more, OISP has no upgrade protection and does not entitle you to future upgrades of the Oracle Database software. The cost of the OISP is $2,300 per server, which is why you see the cost of Oracle support for this benchmark at $82,800 (12 nodes in the cluster for 3 years of support). This represents a little more than 1% of the costs of the term license costs.
As you can see, Oracle manage to significantly improve their price performance result by using term licenses and by using a limited support offering. In the event that you do not use term licenses or this limited support offering, you will need to do additional work to see what the systems would cost for you, or to compare the Oracle results with other TPC-C results.
All TPC results available on the Transaction Processing Performance Council Web site at www.tpc.org.
* 12-Node Sun SPARC Enteprise T5440 server cluster; 7,717,510 tmpC; $2.34/tpmC; available 12/14/09.
** IBM Power 595 Server Model 9119-FHA; 6,085,166 tpmC; $2.81/tpmC; available 12/10/08.
DB2 pureScale: Unlimited Capacity, Transparent to Applications
Today, IBM announced DB2 pureScale. I thought I’d take a few moments to tell you about DB2 pureScale. The first thing you should be aware of is that DB2 pureScale is the culmination of a multiple-year collaboration between the IBM DB2 and IBM Power Systems teams. Some people may initially think that this announcement is a reaction to recent publicity stunts from Oracle Corporation. But when you dig beneath the surface, you will discover that this is a tremendous piece of technology.
As you know, DB2 on System z is the industry gold standard for scalability, availability, and reliability. Nothing comes close to DB2 for z/OS. However, there are organizations who are not taking advantage of the unique capabilities of IBM System z. Often, such organizations have turned to database clusters on distributed systems, like Oracle RAC, to achieve their scalability and availability goals. If your organization attempted to use Oracle RAC, you are only too aware of the issues involved in deploying and updating RAC systems.
DB2 pureScale directly addresses these issues. For some time now, clients have been telling IBM that they need an easier solution for adding capacity to transactional systems. They want to get away from having to specially tune their database systems for use in clusters and from having to make their applications cluster-aware. DB2 pureScale directly addresses these issues by providing application transparency. With DB2 pureScale, you can easily add or remove nodes. You don’t need to re-tune the database systems or update your application code.
Not only is DB2 pureScale much easier to work with, but it also offers higher levels of availability and it offers greater levels of efficiency when adding capacity to your system. Higher levels of availability are made possible by adopting a design with 15 years of proven leadership on System z. These innovations basically ensure that more data is available to your applications for greater amounts of time, when compared with solutions from other vendors. The key to the increased levels of efficiency are the unique architecture and the use of Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) calls, which are much more efficient that IP-based calls.
Here is a link to a short video interview where I talk about DB2 pureScale:
If you want to get more information about DB2 pureScale, make sure to watch the upcoming DB2 Chat with the Labs Webcast on the 21st of October. This Webcast will feature experts from the IBM labs who will dive into the technical details of DB2 pureScale. They will explain the architecture and how the RDMA calls are so much more efficient.
A Closer Look at Exadata v2 Costs
Oracle list the following costs for a full-rack Exadata system:
- $1,150,000 for the hardware
- $1,680,000 for the storage server software
However, there was an asterisk next to the storage server software price. In small print, it says that you must “Use your existing database licenses“. That of course assumes that you have available licenses of Oracle Database and all required add-on features. Of course, I probably don’t need to mention Oracle’s reputation for auditing customer environments and later discovering very large compliance issues. Business Week covered this very topic last week in a very interesting article titled Oracle Has Customers Over a Barrel. Here is a short excerpt from that article:
One sore point with customers is the company’s audits. Most software companies audit their customers occasionally, checking through their offices and tech systems to make sure they’re paying for all the software they use. But Oracle has a reputation for being unusually aggressive, says Jane Disbrow, an analyst at Gartner Research (IT). She says Oracle’s policies can be confusing, and contracts with customers often don’t clearly spell out their rights. As a result, some get presented with bills ranging from $200,000 to $4 million after they get audited. “It’s easy to be out of compliance with Oracle licensing. They do nothing to help people stay in compliance,” says Disbrow. “Then they audit you and hand you a big bill.”
I thought it would be interesting to to to figure out what a full-rack Exadata system would cost when you include all the required and recommended software. And, of course, when you include the first year of maintenance. Note that I am making some educated guesses here. For instance, it appears that Oracle require you to buy Advanced Compression because the compression now occurs in the storage. In time, I’m sure that details like this will be flushed out. In the mean time, here’s my current best guess at the math:
$1,150,000 for the hardware
+ $1,680,000 for the software on the storage servers
+ $369,600 for Support & Maintenance on the Exadata storage software (calculated at 22%)
+ $1,520,000 for Oracle Enterprise Edition ($47.5k * 8 servers * 8 cores * 0.5 Intel core factor)
+ $736,000 for Oracle RAC ($23k * 8 servers * 8 cores * 0.5 Intel core factor)
+ $368,000 for Oracle Partitioning Option ($11.5k * 8 servers * 8 cores * 0.5 Intel core factor)
+ $368,000 for Oracle Advanced Compression ($11.5k * 8 servers * 8 cores * 0.5 Intel core factor)
+ $160,000 Enterprise Manager Diagnostic Pack (recommended)
+ $160,000 Enterprise Manager Tuning Pack (recommended)
+ $728,640 for Support & Maintenance on the above non-storage database software (calculated at 22%)
That all comes out to a whopping $7,240,240 for license and first year support/maintenance, which is a little more startling that the $2.7M indicated in the Oracle materials. Of course, this is the list price, and does not reflect any discounts you may be able to negotiate. A couple of additional things to consider:
- The list price for the annual support costs of the above software components is $1,098,240.
- Don’t forget that these costs do not include installation, which is a custom quote.
Examination of Oracle Q1 Revenues
It seems like its raining Oracle news just now. Oracle had their Q1 earnings call after the close of trading today. Many of the headlines covering this story mention their 5% drop in revenues. But if you examine the numbers a little deeper, it gets interesting for people in the database business (and Oracle Database is what I’m interested in, so I’ll focus on that).
For new software licenses, their “Applications” revenue declined by 4%, but their “Database and Middleware” revenue declined by 22%. A 22% drop is quite a large number (especially in light of some of IBM’s recent earnings calls where they revealed a 30% growth in IBM’s distributed database revenues). But let’s have a closer look at this 22% decline in revenues…
On the earnings call, Oracle mentioned taking advantage of cross-selling opportunities with recent acquisitions like BEA to fuel growth. This makes sense. When you acquire a company, you get the opportunity to sell the acquired products to your existing customer base, and vice-versa. Many large companies use this strategy to realize very nice returns on their investments. Well, if you follow this line of thinking, and revenue from these acquired product lines are growing, then what is happening to the database revenues they are lumped with? If “Middleware” revenues are growing (and this is speculation on my part), and if “Database and Middleware” revenue is down 22%, then what is the true rate of decline in Oracle Database revenues?
Next consider the up-sell of add-on features like Advanced Compression and Real Application Clusters. We know that Oracle derives a lot of revenues from up-selling existing customers on add-on features like these. I wonder how much of their new license revenues were for the core database, and how much were for add-on features. Of course, you could argue that these add-on features were also part of last year’s revenues, and so this is a moot point. However, you must keep in mind that—for a company like Oracle–revenues from these add-on features typically grow at a strong rate. Oracle has been crowing lately about the strong adoption rates for Real Application Clusters. If they are indeed experiencing such strong adoption for add-on features like these, then it is not unreasonable to expect that revenues from add-on features are growing faster than revenues from new core database sales. Or, I should say, that they are not declining as fast as revenues for the core database product.
When you take these factors into consideration, you have to wonder what is the real rate of decline for Oracle Database sales? You start with a 22% decline. Then you factor in that middleware revenues are probably declining at a lower rate than Oracle Database revenues. And then you also factor in that add-on feature revenues are also probably declining at a lower rate that the core database product revenues. What are you then left with? I think its fair to speculate that rate of decline for the Oracle Database product is considerably worse than the 22% decline reported for “Database and Middleware”. I suspect that Oracle executives will have a tough time arguing that they are not losing market share under these circumstances.
IBM’s Take on Exadata v2 Announcement
If you are interested in IBM’s take on yesterday’s Exadata v2 announcement, check out the article published by eWeek titled Oracle, Sun Show Off Super-Fast, Flash-Based OLTP Server. In this article, Bernie Spang offers IBM’s views on the announcement. Highlights include:
- Pointing out that Oracle neglected to include the cost of the software when indicating system price
- Pointing out that this is an x86-based system and not a SPARC system, and discussing the implications
- And highlighting IBM’s momentum in winning over both Sun customers and Oracle Database customers.
I’ll provide some additional personal analysis on this announcement soon…
