HP and Oracle announce SME alliance

HP and Oracle announced on Monday a partnership to try to reach more small and medium-size businesses.

The companies will cooperate to unify their relationships with the resellers who reach smaller customers, to jointly develop and certify Oracle's software with HP's ProLiant servers, and to expand programs for reseller training, sales and marketing.

Small and medium-size businesses are a priority for both companies. Oracle's software is popular chiefly with large companies, but when Oracle released its new 10g database version earlier this year, it made smaller customers a priority.

And HP's ProLiant servers, which use processors from Intel and AMD, are often sold by resellers to smaller HP customers. Those ProLiant business partners are crucial allies in HP's fight to fend off Dell, which sells directly to customers.

HP and Oracle now jointly offer a pre-tested combination of the ProLiant ML350 G4 server and Oracle's E-Business Suite 11i business applications. The product is geared for customers with up to 50 users who tap into the software.

Oracle and HP have more than 88,000 mutual customers, and HP's servers are the most widely used to run Oracle's database, Fiorina said. In addition, about 70 per cent of HP's Unix customers run Oracle software.

Oracle doesn't have tight ties only with HP, however. The company also loudly trumpets its partnerships with Dell and Sun, companies whose top executives also will deliver keynote speeches at the show this week.