Better performance from clustered, low-cost computers say Oracle and RPC

On August 15th, delegates at the International Conference Centre at the Grand Palm Hotel were told that their organisations worldwide should derive considerably more efficiency from their IT assets. The conference – “The Architecture of the Future” was hosted by RPC Data Ltd, who were introduced by AGM Bryan MacKenzie, as an Oracle partner since 1989, and the only Certified Advantage Partner in the region.

Bryan MacKenie on the left, RPC Data's AGM, responds to questions from delegates, Lenny Mwangi assisting.

According to Oracle Corporation’s spokesman, Technology Consultant Lenny Mwangi, companies can attain better performance, greater availability, better business continuity and effective disaster recovery on a cluster of low-cost servers than can be achieved on expensive computer hardware.
“Oracle has designed its latest database releases to run as a single entity across a group of lower cost clustered servers. This means companies can save tens of thousands of Pula on hardware yet enjoy greater reliability.”

In a world where customers demand round-the-clock availability and service, technology such as Oracle’s Real Application Clusters (RAC) promise seamless failover and automatic data recovery, thereby making large systems more nimble in reacting to problems, be they hardware, software or network-related. RAC help these customers meet the demands of globalization, as well as managing growth and profitability.

Delegates attending the conference came from the IT Industry and the Oracle User community.

“But Oracle allows customers the flexibility to start small -” says Mwangi, “there’s no longer the need to make large investments that will only reach their processing capacity in a few years time.” Oracle’s RAC makes it easy and cheaper to add nodes if and when the demands on the system grow, with performance on clusters sometimes being up to 18% higher than the sum of the individual nodes – according to independent studies carried out by Forrester Research.

“Oracle’s global data centre is located in Austin, Texas, where they have more than 9500 servers in a cluster,” said MacKenzie. “This system runs one e-mail server which manages the e-mails of more than 55000 employees around the world. This is a good example of the success of RAC and its efficiency. It’s important that this option is made available to businesses in Botswana.”

Oracle’s Pre-sale Technology Consultant, Lenny Mwangi, promises customers better business continuity at a more affordable price with RAC

The conference was also held in Lusaka, Zambia, at the Pamodi Hotel on August 17th.