..And that pretty much goes for governments too.
The Hardware involved is HP, DELL, SUN(!) and IBM and specially built supercomputers.
The software has to be mentioned since SUN is dedicated to Oracles software as is IBM's to IBM's Power computers
The Software involved is often referred to as ERP
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is business management software—typically a suite of integrated applications—that a company can use to collect, store, manage and interpret data from many business activities, including: Product planning, cost. Manufacturing or service delivery. Marketing and sales.
So it has to do everything (but that does not sound as cool when you are a salesperson trying to convince important people)
Basically huge databases that are queried and put together to useful reports.
And should the emphasis be on OLAP(On-line Analytical Processing) or OLTP (On-line Transaction Processing) - we we leave that quarrel up to SAP and Oracle...
Typically SAP and Oracle are competing about the same customers IBM might loose the software but will still be in the picture with the Hardware. SAP uses IBM hardware as reference.
The need for speed is clear and IBM's Powersystems have different OS's. The IBM AIX is a Unix based operating system and is a part of the System p series And the they have the System i series formerly (i5/OS and OS/400)
IBM build their own stuff and are not depending on companies like Intel. IBM also has ERP software that is pretty fast on their servers.
The risk of a vendor lockdown makes it more sensible to install SAP or Oracle software on them though.
Oracle has a Hardware solution from Sun and if you pick Oracle's integrated solution here you will run the same risk of vendor lockdown.
Oracles Sun servers run on Solaris but you can chose other OS's on some of them.
Dell has the PowerEdge range that can handle both SAP and Oracle but Dell has a close relationship with Oracle so it will be prefered.
HP has the ProLiant server range that can handle Oracle and SAP.
HP seems to cooperate closely with SAP.
Both Dell and HP state that they can use Linux as an OS they can run Oracle and SAP but seem to give Windows priority.
Where IBM and Oracle/Sun stand out as "specialists" HP and DELL have the "can do it all" approach with lots of products and a huge range. The seem to depend more on partners (like Oracle or SAP) than IBM.
