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Dell, EMC, Intel and Oracle Launch Project MegaGrid to Develop Enterprise Grid Computing Best Practices

Posted on: Tuesday, 7 December 2004, 12:00 CST

ORACLE(R) OPENWORLD, SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- In an effort to develop a standard approach to building and deploying an enterprise grid computing infrastructure, Dell Inc. , EMC Corporation , Intel Corporation and Oracle today announced they have collaborated to jointly form Project MegaGrid. The four companies are combining certain core technologies and technical resources to ease the burden of integration for their customers, and to develop a complete enterprise grid computing solution that outperforms traditional SMP offerings at a fraction of the cost.

The initial phase of Project MegaGrid is focused on designing, testing and documenting industry standard best practices for building effective enterprise grid computing infrastructures taking into account cost and performance requirements. These practices also include conducting a series of tests for scalability, performance and manageability of a comprehensive database, server and networked storage configuration. The working infrastructure is architected, configured and validated at the Oracle Global IT Data Center.

Investment to Deliver Enterprise Grid Computing Best Practices

Each Project MegaGrid sponsor invested technical resources to develop, test and validate enterprise grid computing best practices. Specifically:

-- Dell -- provides a complete enterprise-class networked server

infrastructure consisting of dual Intel(R) Xeon(TM) and 4-way Intel(R)

Itanium(R) processor-based PowerEdge servers, and their related I/O

technologies;

-- EMC -- delivers a complete networked storage infrastructure consisting

of EMC(R) CLARiiON(R) CX and EMC Symmetrix(R) DMX networked storage

systems, EMC Celerra(TM) NS Series/Gateway Network Attached Storage

(NAS) systems, EMC ControlCenter(TM) and EMC Navisphere(TM) information

management software;

-- Intel -- contributes processor and server management expertise for both

Intel(R) Xeon(TM) processor and Intel(R) Itanium(R) processor

architectures, optimization tools, and other resources that allow for a

seamless design integration; and,

-- Oracle -- supplies its Oracle(R) 10g technology infrastructure (Oracle

Application Server 10g, Oracle Database 10g, Oracle Real Application

Clusters 10g, Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g) and is hosting the

development center for Project MegaGrid at its Global IT Data Center.

In addition to the technology provided by the four companies, Cramer and F5 Networks, Inc. are contributing to Project MegaGrid. Cramer, a telecom enterprise application software application developer, provides a highly-scalable commercial application to Project MegaGrid featuring full-scale data sets and real-world business transaction processing. F5 Networks provides BIG-IP switches to Project MegaGrid to guarantee application availability and accelerate application performance.

Enterprise Grid Computing Delivers Increased Service Levels

The goal of Project MegaGrid is to enable commercial and enterprise organizations across all vertical industry segments to take advantage of enterprise grid computing. By pooling disparate IT resources that can automatically provision services on demand, organizations can take advantage of enterprise grids to improve their application service levels, to better manage their systems, and to help reduce the cost of their IT systems.

Commercial and enterprise organizations can begin to adopt grid technologies with minimal investment and disruption by:

-- Standardizing onto cost-effective servers and storage infrastructure,

using Intel(R) processor-based platforms, Linux and an intelligent

tiered networked storage approach;

-- Consolidating databases, applications, servers and storage onto a

common platform; and,

-- Automating daily management tasks so that a single administrator can

simultaneously manage hundreds of servers and terabytes of storage.

Overstock.com Deploys Grid with Support from Project MegaGrid Sponsors

Organizations can take advantage of Project MegaGrid best practices and offerings today. Online retailer Overstock.com is working with the four companies to build out an enterprise grid computing infrastructure. "Overstock.com runs EMC, Oracle, Dell, and Intel as the cornerstone of our information infrastructure," says Shawn Schwegman, vice president of technology, Overstock.com. "As a world leader in Internet retail, finding ways to drive down infrastructure costs, while still retaining high quality of service is of key concern. The combination of Oracle Real Application Clusters 10g running Linux on Dell Servers, attached to EMC networked storage, enables a low-cost flexible Grid Computing infrastructure that can scale as a business grows. The work these four partners are doing through Project MegaGrid serves to further simplify and accelerate deployment and provides openly available best practices to simplify management of Grid Computing environments."

Project MegaGrid Demonstrations on Hand at Oracle OpenWorld San Francisco

Project MegaGrid will be demonstrated this week at Oracle OpenWorld at the Moscone Conference Center in San Francisco. Technical demonstrations will be highlighted at each of the Project MegaGrid sponsor booths in the exhibition hall:

-- Dell and EMC -- booth 1602 and 1402, respectively. Ongoing live daily

demonstrations of scaling, provisioning and managing a Project MegaGrid

infrastructure;

-- Intel -- located in booth 916, Intel will feature ongoing presentations

on Phase I results of Project MegaGrid and details of the Project

MegaGrid configuration; and,

-- Oracle -- will focus three pods on Project MegaGrid in the Oracle

DEMOgrounds (booth 930). Pods E16, E17 and E21 will highlight

manageability, database grids and storage grids, respectively.

For additional information about Project MegaGrid, visit the following Web sites:

-- http://www.dell.com/megagrid

-- http://www.emc.com/megagrid

-- http://www.oracle.com/megagrid

About Dell

Dell Inc. is a premier provider of products and services required for customers worldwide to build their information-technology and Internet infrastructures. Company revenue for the past four quarters totaled $47.3 billion. Dell, through its direct business model, designs, manufactures and customizes products and services to customer requirements, and offers an extensive selection of software and peripherals. Information on Dell and its products can be obtained at http://www.dell.com/.

About EMC

EMC Corporation is the world leader in products, services and solutions for information storage and management that help organizations extract the maximum value from their information, at the lowest total cost, across every point in the information lifecycle. Information about EMC's products and services can be found at http://www.emc.com/ .

About Intel

Intel, the world's largest chip maker, is a leading manufacturer of computer, networking and communications products. Additional information about Intel is available at http://www.intel.com/pressroom.

About Oracle

Oracle is the world's largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com/ .

Trademarks

Dell is a trademark of Dell Inc. EMC is a registered trademark of EMC Corporation. Intel is a mark or registered trademark of Intel Corporation in the United States and other countries. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Project MegaGrid Sponsor Quote Sheet

Dell

"Project MegaGrid is leading the charge to provide a standards-based blueprint for deploying a scalable grid today. Companies can now deploy highly responsive enterprise grids for their business applications with tested and validated platforms from Dell and our partners," said Judy Chavis, director of Business Development, Dell.

EMC

"Project MegaGrid will offer the best practices to enhance the integration of enterprise grid computing and the storage infrastructure. By deploying enterprise grids, our mutual customers can expect increased levels of data protection, resilience, scalability, and availability at an affordable price," said Paul Brown, senior director of alliances, EMC.

Intel

"Project MegaGrid will help organizations to better understand the components of enterprise grid computing and to benefit not only from the combined testing and documentation efforts but the inter-relationships between the four sponsors. Project MegaGrid shows that high performance enterprise grids can be achieved with cost effective, standardized technologies as opposed to large, proprietary SMP-based systems," said Phil Brace, general manager, Enterprise Platforms Group Marketing, Intel Corporation.

Oracle

"Organizations struggling to generate higher utilization and service levels from their computing and software resources can reduce the time, labor and cost of IT operations by pooling servers and storage into an enterprise grid computing infrastructure to meet changing business demands. Project MegaGrid will provide customers with pre-defined and tested technology expertise to enable customers to simplify the deployment and management of enterprise grids," said Angelo Pruscino, vice president, Server Technologies, Oracle Corporation.

Photo: NewsCom: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20020718/ORCLLOGOAP Archive: http://photoarchive.ap.org/PRN Photo Desk, photodesk@prnewswire.com

Oracle Corporation

CONTACT: Rachael Lyon of Dell, +1-512-728-4310, orrachael_lyon@dell.com; or Rick Lacroix of EMC Corp., +1-508-293-7261, orlacroix_rick@emc.com; or Mike Houlihan of Intel Press Relations,+1-503-780-8825, or michael.p.houlihan@intel.com; or Eloy Ontiveros ofOracle Corporation, +1-650-607-6458, or eloy.ontiveros@oracle.com

Web site: http://www.dell.com/megagrid

Web site: http://www.emc.com/megagrid

Web site: http://www.oracle.com/megagrid

Web site: http://www.dell.com/

Web site: http://www.intel.com/pressroom

Web site: http://www.emc.com/

Web site: http://www.oracle.com/

Source: PRNewswire-FirstCall

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