Capellas Kicks Off OpenWorld Praising Oracle Clustering

SAN FRANCISCO—Compaq Computer Corp. Chairman and CEO Michael Capellas on Monday sang his song on the benefits of application clustering, ringing home Oracle Corps "Unbreakable" theme at the Oracle OpenWorld conference here.

In his keynote speech, Capellas praised Oracle and Compaqs partnerships regarding clustering technology, including announcements made Monday about Oracle customers using Oracles 9i database with Real Application Clusters on Compaq AlphaServer and ProLiant platforms.

Capellas said Compaqs clustering capabilities added to Oracles database technology equal real-time enterprise solutions. The two companies have several jointly certified configurations, with enhanced scalability, reliability and dual support from both, he said

"Theres a new world of distributed computing coming that will change the way you think about computing architectures," Capellas said.

He added that there would be rich complex data and multi-tier architectures. Dynamic data availability online is becoming a reality.

In addition to application clustering, Capellas listed wireless and mobile computing, digital imaging, content delivery, high availability and scalable applications integration, and universal network storage among the most important issues in computing today.

He said the ASP (application service provider) model started the notion that "we can deliver to the customer this turnkey solution that will be a way of distributing IT."

"Its going to be content that leads commerce," Capellas said. Rich multimedia content, such as video and audio streaming, are leading the way, he said.

Indeed, Capellas said that through clustering, the promise of the next generation data center will become a reality. In three years, he said, 50 percent of all databases will be clustered together, driven by the Internet and global business.

In essence, Capellas said, the benefit of clustering will permit the handling of large amounts of data and the ability to scale on the fly. It will enable integrators and other businesses to "buy and sell IT in a different way—IT on the fly."

Businesses will be able "to deploy IT services when, where and how [they are] needed."

This progress will lead data centers to become profit centers, with features such as real-time access to customer data, zero downtime, the ability to scale on the fly, demanding service level agreements and application hosting.

In an interview explaining real application clustering, Rene Bonvanie, vice president of Oracle 9i marketing, said one of the benefits is not having to code as much.

"Rewriting applications is not free," he said. "The strength of real application clustering is that it doesnt require apps to be rewritten."

In addition, Bonvanie said real application clusters provide the ability to consolidate data across several computers and keep applications running.

As a next step in the clustering world, Bonvanie said to expect further consolidation of the technology. With the use of commodity computers, more and more emphasis will go into management and making it easier to run applications through multiple systems."