Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) announced a new database appliance in collaboration with HP (NYSE:HPQ).^[1] The new HP Enterprise Database Consolidation Appliance for SQL Server will compete with Oracle’s Exadata appliance, which is aimed at large enterprises. Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) is the largest player in the database market and has been using its dominance to sell integrated solutions with Oracle hardware and software. Microsoft is going to launch SQL Server 2012 next year, and is gunning for Oracle, trying to snatch increase its market share in the database market.

Windows Server and SQL Server account for around 14% of the total $28 Trefis price estimate for Microsoft, which is just ahead of its current market price.

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Microsoft and HP Go Up Against Oracle’s Exadata with SQL Server Appliance

Windows is the second most valuable division for Microsoft after Office, but the sales of Windows have been slowing down. Microsoft will launch Windows 8 in the coming year. Xbox, SQL Server and Office have been the primary revenue growth drivers for Microsoft in the past year.

Oracle’s Exadata has shown tremendous growth in the past year, with over 1,000 deployments. With the new SQL Server appliance, Microsoft aims to grab a larger share of the database market from Oracle. The new appliance will compete with Oracle’s Exadata, and this will allow customers to deploy and manage multiple database instances in a virtual environment. It will work with any version of SQL supported by Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualization technology and is aimed at enterprises which run transactional database environments.

Microsoft is investing heavily in SQL Server and is adding new features to it like Hadoop integration for big data support. If there is any consolidation in the database market, we expect Oracle and Microsoft to come out on top.

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