Oracle Database customers look to IBM DB2 to reduce costs and risk.
Oracle’s decision this spring to stop supporting Itanium has, not surprisingly, forced a lot of customers to take a look at their Itanium-based systems providers. But the announcement is also forcing IT decision makers to reevaluate their dependence on Oracle software too, particularly Oracle Database. After all, few want to feel like they’ve had the rug pulled out from under them again in the future.
The good news is that organizations that want to preserve their HP investment can easily switch their database thanks in large part to how much more straightforward database migrations have become with IBM DB2 – something that just wasn’t viable a few short years ago. IBM DB2 for Linux, UNIX and Windows, for instance, now offers an out-of-the-box database compatibility layer for Oracle’s PL/SQL and Sybase ASE, which allows many applications to run against DB2 without code changes. It’s not completely foolproof but users can expect about 90% or more compatibility with just a few minor code changes. That means migrations now take days or weeks instead of months or longer. Plus, because developers are still coding with tools and language they’re familiar with, there’s less chance of bugs being introduced.
But it’s not just ease of migration and reduced risk that has Oracle Database customers taking a hard look at DB2. Cost has become a huge factor too. In December Oracle raised the price of its database software on Itanium-based servers. So many organizations are finding it costs less to switch to DB2 than it does to stay on Oracle.
Take Reliance Life, for instance, which determined that the total cost of ownership with DB2 was almost half the cost of Oracle Database. Application availability and the number of concurrent users IT supports also increased significantly. The organization reported 95% uptime of all applications compared to only 80% with Oracle Database and a jump from 3,000 concurrent users for its portal to 12,000.
DB2 also provides a range of capabilities for automating tasks, including memory, space and configuration management features, to help improve database administrator productivity as the organization grows.
About Doug Sekus
Doug Sekus has over 20 years experience in the information technology industry, most recently as the Director of Softchoice Corporation’s Business Development, Servers and Virtualization sector.
Recent Conversations