Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) has been lukewarm on InfiniBand. We see InfiniBand as a high-end niche fabric, says HP server marketing VP Paul Miller, who then adds, We will follow the economics of InfiniBand. Thats hardly a ringing endorsement as a technology for commercial applications. Dell was an early InfiniBander, but has yet to declare its intentions after the technology stumbled coming out of the gates.
InfiniCon marketing executive VP Chuck Foley says Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL) could be the most important player in pushing InfiniBand to the commercial space. Oracle will use InfiniCon switches to demonstrate its new 10g clustered database at Linux World this week, and InfiniBand backers say their technology is the best choice to run the high-performance transaction application.
Oracle 10g is the first commercial application that has taken advantage of InfiniBand, Foley says. It needs something like InfiniBand to run the way its designed to run. Gruener agrees that Oracle 10g could speed InfiniBands acceptance in the enterprise.
[Commercial] expectations for InfiniBand are lower than they were in 2001, he says. That helps focus InfiniBand where it makes most sense. Thats in the high-performance, online transaction space with Oracle 10g; and eventually high-performance grids might end up commercially available.
Peter ffoulkes, communications manager of Suns HPTC group, says Sun considers InfiniBand "quite a big deal."
Bob Friday, Chief AI Officer for Juniper Networks, explains how the advanced technology is transforming operations.
Contact center leaders from 8x8, Awaken Intelligence, and 360insight discuss the importance of agent experience.
AI may force enterprises to rewire parts of their data centers so they are fully optimized to run such workloads. The question is do you use Ethernet or InfiniBand?
