Oracle today announced that the company will join the IBM AIX Collaboration Center as a founding partner. As a member of the IACC, Oracle developers will work closely with IBM to more tightly integrate Oracle applications with the current and upcoming versions of AIX 5L, and will continue to deliver Oracle applications on AIX concurrent with their availability on other platforms. Through this collaboration, customers will benefit from greater exploitation of each platform’s leadership features including virtualization, security and cross-platform portability. Today, Oracle and IBM share more than 11,000 customers.

“Our applications provide customers with the tools they need to manage the information that runs their businesses,” said Charles Phillips, president, Oracle. “IBM has become the leader in the UNIX marketplace and our partnership with the company will allow Oracle to take advantage of the momentum they have generated over the last few years.”

IBM System p5 and eServer p5 systems lead the industry with more than 70 key computing performance benchmarks. Earlier this year, Oracle and IBM announced a world record TPC-C benchmark for performance for a 32-processor system.

“Oracle’s interest and investment in the AIX development platform is a recognition of IBM’s leadership in the Unix marketplace, and our focus on creating technologies that are fundamental to the futures of both our customers and partners,” said Adalio Sanchez, General Manager, IBM eServer pSeries.

According to IDC, IBM is the number one UNIX vendor in the world and is the fastest growing company in eleven of the last twelve quarters.

AIX 5L runs across the entire range of IBM eServer pSeries systems, from entry-level servers and workstations to powerful supercomputers systems, which runs some of the most complex commercial and technical workloads in the world.