Microsoft and HP Frontline marriage births appliance iron Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft have started rolling out server appliances configured for specific jobs while also lifting the veil on future appliances due later this year. Almost precisely a year ago, HP and Microsoft dedicated $250m to create a partnership nicknamed Frontline to come up with stacks that married HP's x64-based …
So, the hp channel partners that come our way have usually spent lots of time and money getting staff accredited on a slew of M$ products, partly so they can differentiate themselves from the "tin-shifter" resellers that don't even know how to spell enterprise. Those expensively trained staff were supposed to make money back for the channel partners by selling the configuration services most customers would need to put the individual hp and M$ products together, so how do they feel if hp and M$ take away all the advantage those accredited staff give them by selling pre-configured solutions? Same goes for outsourcers - who needs to buy expensive hosting if the boxes comes pre-built? Is hp (and no doubt Dell, IBM and Fujitsu with their versions) going to allow the tin-shifters to sell these?
Who the hell care's? It's a bloody Micro$h!te box! Who in their right mind is going to buy a SQL Server box for warehousing??? Of course it will be ridiculously cheap, pays yer money and takes yer choice....may well be good enough for a small cheap shop who can afford all the downtime that will inevitably happen with a scaled out SQL *cough* cluster.
Personally, I'd go for something which is actually proven in the market, Oracle or DB2 namely.
"Who the hell care's?...." Well, I would hope hp would as I suspect the channel still represents a lot of feet on the street for them, especially in the big accounts, and if they don't look after those top-line resellers then they might advise products not from hp (OK, yes to Oracle, but DB2?!?! - are you smoking something?). As an example, we certainly include the resellers in our discussions, so I assume there must be some way hp, Dell et al will keep the deal sweet for their top partners.
"....may well be good enough for a small cheap shop who can afford all the downtime that will inevitably happen with a scaled out SQL *cough* cluster...." Having spent some time with large and stable instances of SQL on Itanium, I can only assume your statements come from a lack of familiarity (that or the smoking illegal substances angle). Can I suggest you look at the M$ SQL 2008 case studies page (http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/case-studies.aspx)? Ooh, look at that - the first entry is a 5TB database moving off Oracle onto SQL 2008 in preference to DB2!
Duh. Of course a microsoft whitepaper is going to say moving to their attempt at a database a good idea. They have to try and put something promising about their product as no one else does. Besides. I don't even think MS tries to compare their db product to oracle or db2. I think they try to compete against msql & postgres on Linux. Vendors are always noting someone moving off a compeitors product. It's usually a cost knee jerk reaction followed by another one when they realize their "new" system is worse off.
And really? Why mention Itanium? Hasn't everyone, including microsoft admited itanium is obsolete? Wait. I guess HP still talks it up. Until they realize they can't hawk it to suckers. Hopefully their new partner microsoft gives them a heads up.
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