Oracle Licenses VMware APIs for Storage Management

Sometimes technology rivals do what's best for customers and partners. A case in point: Oracle (ORCL) has licensed VMware's (VMW) vSphere Storage APIs. The move will allow channel partners — including cloud services providers — and customers to more easily manage Oracle storage from VMware environments, the two companies claim. Here's why.

In a prepared statement, Oracle said:

"VMware users and service providers will be able to more easily take advantage of the higher levels of performance and efficiency available with Oracle's ZFS Storage Appliance and Pillar Axiom storage systems. Customers can also streamline their data centers by consolidating storage onto fewer, higher performance storage systems to support an ever growing number of virtualized servers."

The VAR Guy is intrigued. Oracle's own hypervisor competes against VMware's vSphere. Plus, Oracle's Engineered Systems strategy counters VCE — which combines hardware and software from VMware, Cisco and EMC.

The expanded Oracle-VMware licensing relationship includes the VMware vSphere API for Array Integration (VAAI), VMware vSphere API for Storage Awareness (VASA), VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM), and VMware vSphere.

Oracle claims VMware partners and customers will be able to manage thousands of virtual machines per storage appliance.