The ideal platform for clouds

By Sasha Harrinanan, Thursday, September 1 2011

‘Time is money’ is a popular adage that speaks to the importance of efficiency in one’s business operations. The advent of computers, the internet and now remote or cloud computing, means data storage now plays a key role in the timely and efficient running of a company, especially those that rely on large amounts of data processing.

Hence the creation of the Exadata Database Machine (Exadata) by the California-based computer technology giant Oracle Corporation.

According to Oracle’s website, Exadata “is the only database machine that provides extreme performance for both data warehousing and online transaction processing (OLTP) applications, making it the ideal platform for consolidating onto grids or private clouds.”

Exadata is now available in Trinidad and Tobago through Oracle partner, Fujitsu Caribbean. It features a complete package of servers, storage, networking, and software that Oracle described as “massively scalable, secure, and redundant. Customers can reduce IT (Information Technology) costs through consolidation, manage more data on multiple compression tiers, improve performance of all applications, and make better business decisions in real time.”

At the recent launch of Exadata in TT, hosted at the Hyatt Regency hotel on Wrightson Road, Port-of-Spain, Fujitsu Caribbean’s vice-president and senior business development manager Ian McKay explained why insurance and telecommunications companies would benefit from using the Exadata system.

“For management of data processing companies to be able to run their business effectively and efficiently, they need timely data which Oracle’s software provides. Before Exadata came along, one of our clients, Digicel Haiti, had to wait ten hours for a report to be completed which meant that data was already a day late by the time management got it.

“They now get that same information in two hours, allowing Digicel to respond quickly and accurately to customer demands. Other data processes at the company have been reduced from three hours to as little as ten minutes, allowing the telecoms company to expand its services,” McKay said.

Oracle’s Website touted other benefits of buying the system. Extreme performance for data warehouses; Exadata Smart Scan improves query performance by offloading intensive query processing and data mining scoring to scalable intelligent storage servers.

Extreme performance for OLTP applications; Exadata Smart Flash Cache transparently caches “hot” data to fast solid-state storage, improving query response times and throughput.

Extreme performance for consolidated workloads, Exadata's massively parallel grid is ideally suited for consolidating data warehousing and OLTP applications, and Exadata quality-of-service resource management capabilities ensure fast response times for all users.

McKay acknowledges purchasing an Exadata system was “a sizeable investment, we’re talking six figures at least” but told Business Day the business would definitely re-coup that money when their operating times are significantly reduced, as highlighted by the Digicel Haiti example.

However he could not give a base price. “It is difficult to quote a base price for the system because the number of data racks and software licenses the client needs, would determine the final price. Right now everybody is very wary of any major capital expenditure and for them to spend money on Exadata, they have to see a definitive and quantifiable return on investment. In other words, they have to see something that says to them ‘OK if I invest in this, how would it affect my bottom line? How quickly can it pay for itself by helping my business to grow?’

“That’s why we offer to run a diagnostic of their system, with an analysis of expected efficiency improvements if Exadata was installed,” McKay explained.

The offer has been dubbed 551DW POV, which stands for five tables, five queries, one terabyte of data works in a proof-of-value.

It is free of charge but requires the potential customer to allow Oracle’s Enterprise Technology Centre access to their business information and computer systems.

Fujitsu Caribbean is an Oracle partner, so once a company purchases the Exadata Database Machine, Fujitsu would install and support the system.

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