Oracle offers bundles to customers

Oracle is encouraging its customers to move from using third-party hardware for running their platforms on to systems, which bundle Oracle’s middleware and software with its Sun Server.

“Oracle is truly in a position to offer products for the entire stack," said David Simmons, director of Oracle’s Sun Sparc enterprise server business.

Earlier in August, in San Francisco, the company explained the cost and performance benefits of combined hardware and software datacentre platforms.

"We know that customers need choices, so we provide a portfolio of traditional best of breed, but we really do have a vision of getting to engineered systems," said Simmons.

Even the cloud has been taken into consideration. Customers can use Oracle’s Exadata server hardware combined with the Private Database Cloud and develop shared database systems – all ready to use within days.

However, even with the promise of better performance, and the benefits of a single contact for issues such as security and support - locking into a single vendor for the entire datacentre stack is undoubtedly a hard sell for some enterprises.

Charles King, analyst at Pund-IT does not think many enterprise customers are looking for one vendor to supply everything.

“They don't like to be told who they can and can't do business with. In the datacentre, it seems variety is the spice of life," he said.

This integrated stack may prove to be a positive offering.