ERP companies test Oracle's Iron

NEWS Application vendors have begun testing and deploying their software on a beta version of Oracle's Raw Iron technology. The Oracle8i "Raw Iron" appliance will allow businesses to build and use applications without having to buy an operating system (OS), instead it has a Solaris operating system kernel from Sun Microsystems and only the core OS functions embedded into the database. Oracle claims this approach will lower system costs for customers by up to 25 per cent compared to those of a general purpose database loaded on a traditional server. Michael Rocha, senior vice president, platform technologies at Oracle, explained that initially labour costs are reduced because of the ease of installation and the absence of extraneous hardware and software. He added that TCO (total cost of ownership) is also reduced due to the centralised management that can be accessed remotely. The appliances will ship in the autumn and will initially be sold by Dell, Compaq, Siemens, Sun and Hewlett-Packard.