The partnership between Dell and Oracle appears to be getting closer.
For a while now Dell has been packaging Oracle software and services with hardware, while Oracle optimised services for Dell’s products.
According to Sourcing Focus, the relationship is hotting up.
The two companies are starting to share customer support and engineering support services. Oracle is now listing Dell as a preferred x86 partner for deploying its software. At the same time, Dell highlighted Oracle as a preferred enterprise software provider for its hardware.
Oracle Co-President Mark Hurd described the shared relationship between the two IT giants as: “We test it together, we patch it together, we support it together.”
What is odd about the relationship is that the pair sometimes compete in different markets. Ironically, by working together, they hope to get a general competition advantage.
Dell has to come up with some new ideas as it tries to get back its market share after a downturn in its traditional PC markets.
It is not clear what Oracle’s advantage is, particularly as it has its own hardware business which is also not doing so well.
Hurd admitted that this more of a win for Dell and that this expanded alliance will enable Dell to “gain significant market share by delivering to its customers an integrated, optimized solution designed to deploy business critical applications”.
