Oracle-Sun: The OnStar To Your Data Center?Oracle-Sun: The OnStar To Your Data Center?

Listening to the all-day Oracle-Sun event, which is still going on … A couple of execs have mentioned Oracle having a telemetry connection into your data center, to aid in support, to monitor, and even make pro-active changes or recommendations, if you want. It's typical of the incredible trust Oracle is asking companies to have in it.Oracle President Charles Phillips kicked off this event, which maps out Oracle's strategy post-acquisition with Sun. One big point of emphasis for the combined Oracle-Sun is the promise of making enterprise IT systems easier to deploy and run. The big picture value Oracle-Sun is promising is that you'll buy stacks of pre-integrated software and hardware, from Sun servers and storage and Solaris operating system up to Oracle database, middleware, and applications. Phillips says that'll make it easier for Oracle to support companies, with fewer breaks from things like third-party patches, less finger-pointing about which vendors to blame. "If you use this configuration, we can support you better," Phillips says. "... Same idea we've been talking about for years, we're just extending it down several layers."

Oracle will also be "pro active" with its support, if a customer wants it to, Phillips says. "Companies will send system information every day, sometimes several times a day, and we'll make changes for them [if the customer wants]," he says. John Fowler, a longtime Sun leader who spoke about Oracle-Sun's hardware strategy, also emphasizes the "serviceability" advantages the combined companies will have from understanding the whole stack, and referenced "telemetry back to Oracle."

I don't know how much of this interactive support exists today with Oracle's app support, or Sun's products. If you have insight, please feel free to share with your peers.

But my first reaction to the integration strategy being laid out now is that Oracle-Sun is asking enterprise customers to enter an extraordinarily close, trusting strategic relationship with it. Oracle-Sun wants you to bet your business on an increasingly large stack of software and hardware, and to trust it even more than ever to support that stack. Are you ready for that?

Welcome your thoughts. I'll offer more details as the event continues ...