back to article Ellison brandishes 'speed of thought' Exalytics appliance

Larry Ellison is serious about hardware because he is serious about software. Mostly, however, he's serious about making money – which is why Ellison's OpenWorld keynote surprise in San Francisco on Sunday was a whole new machine: the Exalytics in-memory appliance. Exalytics is based on Oracle's Sun Fire X4470 M2 server, which …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Arbor Software originally created Essbase.

    Essbase was created by Arbor Software which was merged with Hyperion Software in 1998 to form Hyperion Solutions which was then (unfortunately) acquired by Oracle in 2007.

  2. Voland's right hand Silver badge
    Devil

    More toys for the "analyze your way to growth"

    http://blogs.hbr.org/martin/2011/09/you-cant-analyze-your-way-to-g.html

    We have long extracted all possible advantages from doing BI and have hit diminishing returns. So the money wasted on this appliance is better used on the salary of someone capable to produce a new and innovative product. Yeah, I know, heretical thought, paying smelly designers and engineers without an MBA. Like that is going to happen.

    1. Robert Hill
      Pirate

      You just, right?

      Firstly, a number of follow-on comments to the article you posted were very pointed, and true, ripostes to the article. In particular, BI is designed for operational and tactical decisions, not strategy as the author tries to claim.

      And anyone who works with large amounts of customer data knows that actually, most organizations are still pretty POOR at it, especially in time-critical areas or where data volumes still stymie easy analysis. This kit will really be of huge assistance to both - and I'm thinking every mobile telco that hasn't hand-built an alternative will be looking strongly at these for Call Data Record analysis, to say nothing of the program traders in banks and funds.

      Lastly, much of what it does isn't really that NEW, it's just that you had to do a whole lot of hard work, or work with second-tier vendors (Kognitio, etc.), to get it done. This packages it nicely, and gives it the patina of a first-tier vendor. I'll hold off judgement until I see it in action (and the pricing), but I'm fairly impressed by the specs and approach.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Mushroom

    larry smelling the smoke?

    the words "in memory" ring immediately the similar SAP product/feature that was launched this year (in-memory, Hana), which is supposed to replace databases as we know them in the ERP area. Although SAP took a more radical approach than just placing the DB data in the DRAM. Let the war reach a new apothe-osis :P.

    1. Billl
      FAIL

      re: larry smelling the smoke?

      Larry already has an In Memory DB, it's called TImesTen. It was originally developed at HP in 1996, spun off, and then bought by Oracle in 2005. SAP may be making more noise about In Memory DB, but they definitely are not the leader.

  4. Pete 2 Silver badge

    For all its wonderful speed

    ... it still relies on the person in front of the screen to ask sensible questions.

    "Before you finish asking a question, it can guess and give you the answer." I wonder how often that answer is either: correct, relevant or answers the question you had in mind. Any little computer can reply "42", but the key is to know why that is the right answer.

  5. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
    Paris Hilton

    Two arms and how many legs?

    Is this going to cost.

    I'm not talking about the H/W but the frankly silly prices that Oracle charge for their software when it runs on anything more than a single core X86.

    Paris coz even she knows when she is having her clothes ripped off.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      silly prices

      These would be the prices that enough customers pay to make Larry a billionaire? Doesn't sound silly to me.

  6. drunk.smile
    Coat

    Yeah, but can it...

    ...run Crysis on full settings.

    - Mine's the one with the dust & the Penguin book of Bob Monkhouse jokes in the pocket.

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