HOPKINGTON, Mass., SAN JOSE and REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., April 3, 2000 -(http://www.oracle.com/tellmemore/?144131) To address the escalating demands on e-business infrastructures, EMC Corp., Cisco Systems, Inc. and Oracle Corp. today announced the ECOstructure (EMC/Cisco/Oracle Infrastructure) initiative - an alliance designed to integrate advanced technologies and provide the tools necessary to simplify, accelerate and otherwise improve the implementation of highly available e-business infrastructures.
As part of the initiative, a joint development center has been established to create technical configuration blueprints that streamline use of the high availability components of each companies' products across an entire infrastructure "ecosystem." The first of these blueprints, The Resilient ECOstructure, defines best practices and provides reference configurations for the implementation, operation and support of a complete networking, storage and software solution. The Resilient ECOstructure blueprint is available immediately at http://www.eECOstructure.com.
KPMG LLP, the professional services firm, plans to utilize the ECOstructure blueprints as a basis for the assessment and implementation of e-business solutions. "KPMG's experience in security and risk mitigation and controls, coupled with EMC, Cisco and Oracle's infrastructure expertise will help improve the ability to rapidly and reliably satisfy end-customers' e-business demands," said Stuart Campbell, partner-in-charge of KPMG LLP's Information Risk Management (IRM) Practice. "KPMG will use the ECOstructure blueprints as a tool to help instill trust and reliability in the IT solutions of firms entering the e-business arena."
According to Forrester Research, Internet commerce alone will account for more than $3.2 trillion in spending by 2003, resulting in an increased reliance on highly available technology infrastructures. The ECOstructure initiative was formed to address these heightened requirements by combining the strengths of EMC, Cisco and Oracle.
"On the Internet, there really is no acceptable amount of down time-24 x 7 really means 24 x 7," said Jim Schanzenbach, Chief Technology Officer of DrugEmporium.com, one of the nation's leading online drugstores. "The foundation of DrugEmporium.com is built upon Oracle, EMC and Cisco technologies, a combination so strong we trust the infrastructure we know it is as reliable as possible. We needed scalable, cutting-edge capabilities to meet our objectives, and these industry leaders exceeded our expectations."
Today's announcement builds on previous partnerships between these ECOstructure members: Oracle and EMC's E-Business Infrastructure Alliance, announced in October 1999, and EMC and Cisco's membership in Oracle's E-Business Continuity Program, announced in January 2000. The ECOstructure alliance leverages engineering personnel and products from each company in the Redwood Shores-based joint development center. The center is dedicated toward ongoing testing and validation of existing and new technologies, including Oracle8i, Oracle. Parallel Server and the Oracle Application Server; EMC's Symmetrix Enterprise Storage systems and software; and the Cisco 7000 Series routers, Catalyst 6000 family switches, Cisco LocalDirector, Cisco Cache Engine and the Cisco Secure PIX firewall.
