I have been meeting and visiting with customers and partners all across the world recently. The theme of my conversations has invariably led to the fact that people need (and now want) to take their tier-1 enterprise workloads, and put them on a virtualized infrastructure. This shift in perspective is quite remarkable given the history of House of Brick’s involvement in this very process.
At Oracle Open World in 2007, House of Brick hosted the “vmware Oracle Solutions Lab”. We demonstrated Oracle RAC-enabled database and E-Business Suite running on vmware. People were fascinated with what we had done, but to a person told us that “we are not going to virtualize Oracle”.
One year later and OOW-2008, the message had shifted slightly. People said “we know we are going to have to virtualize our Oracle stacks…we are just not ready.”
Most recently, at OOW-2009, the message had shifted again. “We are trying to virtualize our Oracle stacks (and even RAC) on vmware, but we need some help.”
House of Brick has been, as Dave Welch our Chief Evangelist likes to say, the industry’s lightning rod when it comes to tier-1 workload virtualization. Our phone has been ringing off the hook since OOW-09 because we know how to help. We have the experience and customer references to demonstrate how virtualizing Oracle and other tier-1 workloads on vmware is not only possible, but has significant compelling business value.
Mark Wilson, the CIO of SM Wilson & Co in St. Louis told me that House of Brick’s help in virtualizing his entire data center (including his Oracle-based ERP) has given him an edge over his competition in being able to save money, and time, while providing a more stable environment for his internal and external customers.
This is an exciting time for House of Brick. Our years-long message finally seems to be resonating. We couldn’t be more thrilled!
Nathan
