Arch rivals Intel and AMD are being bullish about their new multi-core processors. AMD with its 12-core Opteron 6000 series and Intel, with its 6-core Xeon 7500 processor series, are looking to give a fillip to a server market, which is still reeling from the effects of the recession.

With analysts expecting tech spending to increase in 2010, some experts feel the launches of the Xeon and Opteron could not have come at a better time. So can these new processors live up to expectations?

Even service providers are looking at it in the same way – ‘More processors = more performance per server = less need to maintain a high number of physical servers = cost savings’ is how they view it.

Considering that virtualization and consolidation are definitely  top priorities on most CIOs’ lists for this year, Intel and AMD seem to have played their cards at the right time. However, a possible concern could be around applications which are licensed as per-core, as opposed to per-CPU licensing. An increase in the number of cores will lead to a substantial increase in licensing costs of these applications, in effect negating the benefits from the performance improvements of these processors.

Another thing to be kept in mind is that consolidation and higher output per saver could lead to an increase in power usage, which will further balances out any efficiency gained. To avoid this, Singh advises that business evaluate the specific power v/s workload metric for particular user scenarios in the real-world to ensure that an upgrade to these processors will actually suit their requirements.

So, now if you have decided to upgrade to servers running these new multi-core processors, the next question should be – which one to choose? Asking the same question to NetMagic, we were told that the company would make a decision on the basis of price v/s performance and there were no preferences since they servers running AMD as well as Intel processors and were happy with both.

Price! – this is where AMD has an edge over Intel. Even if we forget that AMD has managed to pack 12 cores into the Opteron, twice the number that the Xeon boasts of, the Opteron family of processors are much cheaper as compared to the Xeon. This will surely have an effect on buying decisions and maybe make AMD’s Opteron more attractive to users. However this strategy has not really helped AMD much in the past, it still lags behind Intel in market share despite coming out with cheaper and arguably better products, but maybe in the present conditions this could just turn out to be a vital factor.

Meanwhile, hardware and software vendors like Citrix, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, Red Hat, SAP, VMware, Cisco, Cray, Dell, Fujitsu, Hitachi, HP, IBM, NEC, Oracle, etc. are expected to support  Intel’s XEON 7500-based platforms. AMD has not released the list of partners, though a day after the launch, it announced that Acer would be making enterprise servers using the Opteron 6000 series.

The stage has been set with enterprises going to define the demand for multi-core processors as their benefits make for an overwhelming buy. With a long, well recorded history of legal disputes between Intel and AMD, are we looking at a new chapter in the “Core Wars”?

Following an expensive acquisition (Sun Microsystems) and battling both IBM and SAP in the markets, Oracle still managed to post an impressive profit of $1.19 billion, or 23 cents per share, for the quarter ended February 28.

SAP’s most recent quarter was the best quarter of their year, only down 15%, while Oracle’s application sales were up 21%. But SAP is well ahead of them in the number of CEOs for this year, announcing their third and fourth, while they had only one.

Not entirely surprising, Oracle’s quarterly profit did slip by 11 percent as a result of its digestion of the $7.4 billion deal to bring Sun into its ranks. But according to Oracle’s Chief Financial Officer Jeff Epstein, the acquisition also added $458 million in revenue to the company’s bottom line.

They claim that the Sun integration is going even better than they expected.

India has large IT savvy population and so the level of adoption and interpreting data is different from the western world

To meet a growing demand from companies for SaaS BI, SAP  has unveiled its BusinessObjects BI OnDemand solution tools for companies in India that require business intelligence (BI) through software-as-a-service (SaaS). The solution which had been rolled out 3-4 years ago has now been developed on a Web 2.0 platform that makes it interactive.

Customers using the on-demand solution can create ad-hoc reports, conduct what-if analyses and securely share this information inside or outside the company. Business users can provide customers, partners and employees across all lines of business with immediate, anytime access to the most current data. It also provides the ability to access all on-demand and on-premise data – including SAP data and also from the Salesforce customer relationship management (CRM) application.

On-demand offerings from the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio currently have more than 260,000 subscribers who are empowered with the tools and information required to drive their businesses forward.

SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand also has a flexible pricing model, offering three editions of the product to address the different needs of each customer: Free Personal, Essential and Advanced editions. The solution will also include capabilities that make it easier than ever for business users to tap into their data online, get better insight into their organization and securely share illustrative reports and dashboards with colleagues inside and outside the firewall.

HCL Axon, one of the largest services provider dedicated to SAP solutions, has won the Frost & Sullivan Aerospace IT Solutions Provider 2010 award for its outstanding performance and industry contribution in Asia-Pacific.

Speaking on the occasion, Ruth Rudwick, SVP – head of global delivery, HCL Axon said that they were delighted to be acknowledged by Frost & Sullivan for their best-of-breed Maintenance, Repair & Overhaul (MRO) solution called iMRO. HCL Axon, in cooperation with SAP AG, responded to the needs of global aerospace market by introducing this unique standard that helps organizations optimize IT investments and realize benefits to the maximum.

Frost & Sullivan presents this award to organizations that demonstrate excellent qualities in meeting the demands and requirements of clients in the aerospace IT market segment in Asia-Pacific. Critical parameters like quality, complexity, and customization are assessed for some of the leading names in the category.