Oracle announced Oracle VM, a server virtualization software which supports both Oracle and non-Oracle applications. Oracle VM offers scalable, low-cost server virtualization that is up to three times more efficient than existing products from other vendors. Key Oracle products including Oracle Database, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Applications are certified with Oracle VM.

Backed by Oracle's world-class support organization, customers have a single point of support for their entire virtualization environments, including Linux operating system and Oracle products.

Consisting of open source server software and an integrated Web browser-based management console, Oracle VM provides an easy-to-use, rich, graphical interface for creating and managing virtual server pools, running on x86 and x86-64-based systems, across an enterprise.

Oracle VM offers simplified installation with single install, patching and upgrading for both Oracle VM and Oracle Enterprise Linux, besides faster deployment and greater efficiency and Linux and Windows support as well as lowers Total Cost of Ownership.

Oracle VM extends Oracle's support for grid computing by providing the ability to virtualize within as well as across servers. Oracle's grid computing-based solutions together with Oracle VM are capable of virtualizing all infrastructure resources, as a well as data and applications, providing a complete virtualization solution for the data center and creating a cost effective, efficient and agile IT environment.

"Customers can now optimize resource consolidation by deploying Oracle VM with Oracle Unbreakable Linux, and run the full Oracle software stack -- Oracle Database, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Enterprise Manager and Oracle Applications -- all with one worldwide support call," said Oracle's Oracle Chief Corporate Architect, Edward Screven.

"With Oracle VM, customers can respond more rapidly to business changes, increase ROI and reduce lifetime total cost of ownership. Oracle VM brings enterprise-class support and backing to server virtualization, giving customers the confidence to deploy virtualized solutions," added Screven.

"Enterprises of all sizes are increasingly embracing virtualization to consolidate resources, better leverage commodity hardware and further reduce computing costs," said John Humphreys VP of Enterprise Virtualization, IDC. "Products like Oracle VM can be excellent tools that enable IT to increase their server utilization, and dramatically reduce complexity and overall total cost of ownership."

Oracle VM is based on the open source Xen hypervisor technology.