It will be very difficult to summarize in a short post all the details and already available customers and ISVs results leveraging Oracle investment, design and ability to execute on SPARC servers complete renewal with not one but 2 processors launched : SPARC T5 and M5. It is somehow captured in the title of this entry, in Larry's own words: "extreme performances at exceptionally low cost". To give you a quick idea, we just announced 8 552 523 tpmC with 1x T5-8 (a new 8x sockets T5 mid-range server). Adding on top, "extreme scalability with extreme reliability", as with the M5-32 server, we can scale up to 32x sockets and 32 TB of memory, in a mission-critical system.
New way of designing systems
As what John Fowler was saying : "this starts with design". Here at Oracle, we have a new way of designing. Historically systems were designed by putting servers, storage, network and OS together. At Oracle we add Database, Middleware and Applications in the design. We think what it
takes for the coherency protocols, the interfaces, and design around those points... and more.
Today we introduce not one but 2x processors with the whole family of servers associated with them. Thanks to common architecture they are design to work together. All of this of course runs Solaris. You can run Solaris 10, Solaris 11 and virtualize. No break on binary compatibility.
Direct benefit for your applications... at lowest risk... and lowest cost
This is good for our customers and our ISVs, enabling them to run their applications unchanged on those new platforms with no equivalent performance gain, lowest cost and lowest risks, thanks to the binary compatibility and the new servers design under Oracle era. There was many customers examples on-stage, so I will just pick 2, SAS moving from M9000 to M5-32 with a x15 gain overall, and Sybase moving from M5000 to a T5-2 with a x11 gain overall. Those being in my opinion very important as they are reflecting real applications and customers experiences, many of them being in the financial services, and already having jump on those new systems (thanks to the beta program).
To get a better idea of what the new SPARC T5 and M5 will bring to your applications, being Siebel, E-Business Suite, JD Edwards, Java, or SAP... Have a look here : https://blogs.oracle.com/BestPerf/ on the 17 worlds records... on performances and price.