Business Insider
Intel CEO Brian Krzanich
The two companies have been partners for decades but now, they have a new common competitor: IBM.
This now that IBM has sold its Intel-based computer server business to Lenovo and is now concentrating on selling only the more expensive, higher-margin computer servers that use its own Power chip.
So a few months ago, Oracle's rising star head of engineering and products, Thomas Kurian, met with a few of Intel's Software and Services Group, Doug Fisher said on stage.
Fisher and Kurian decided to set up a joint team of engineers from both companies near Intel's facilities in Oregon, code named Project Apollo.
The team was told to figure out how to set up massive cloud computing data centers that will run faster by using Oracle hardware with Intel chips and take on IBM in the cloud computing hardware market.
Project Apollo completed their mission and are now sharing "how to" documents to convince
But wait, there's more. Hurd and Krzanich also said they started another new partnership - this one to target Oracle's database and software customers to ditch their IBM computer servers and buy Oracle/Intel servers instead.
What's interesting is that, like IBM, Oracle also competes with Intel.
Oracle's fastest, most expensive computer servers use Oracle's own chips, the SPARC chips technology that it gained when it bought Sun Micrososystems.
But the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So Intel and Oracle are getting cozier these days going after IBM.
Oracle CEO Mark Hurd says they have already convinced thousands of customers to drop IBM for Oracle when running Oracle software. That's interesting, but Oracle currently has 420,000 customers, so it sounds like a fairly low percentage so far.
We'll see how much harm this renewed love affair between Intel and Oracle really does to IBM.
The reason IBM divested its Intel computer server business is to stop focusing on computer server hardware and go after new areas instead, particularly the big data/analytics trend, and cloud computing.