Following ICL’s decision a couple of years ago to adopt Ingres in preference to Oracle as its relational database product, ICL has now decided to support Oracle as well as Ingres in its markets outside the UK on its Unix-based hardware. Oracle has in fact been competing head to head with Ingres for the past year in this market and in ICL’s Series 39 VME environment. Indeed ICL’s UKP1.8m Unix contract with the UK Inland Revenue back in November (CI No 1,302) carried 170 Oracle licences, while its recent sale of a DRS 6000 to the European Commission has Oracle as its relational database. Oracle has been lobbying ICL hard for an OEM agreement which has now been signed. Under the agreement ICL will be in a position to sell Oracle on its DRS 300, DRS 400, DRS 500 and DRS 6000 machines in the Continent and in other international markets. The deal excludes the UK because, according to ICL, the majority of its UK users prefer Ingres, although ICL is prepared to work with Oracle where a UK user asks for its relational database. Oracle’s ICL product line manager Ian Hardacre says the agreement with ICL is important as ICL is a major player in the European market and will continue to be so with its DRS 6000s. He is planning to sell twice as many relational databases as Oracle’s competitors in all the markets covered by the agreement and will continue to sell into UK accounts as an independent supplier.
