In his most straightforward comment to date on the power that comes from optimizing hardware and software from the ground up, Ballmer sounds a lot like Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, who launched the the engineered-system concept about four years ago with the first version of the Oracle Exadata Database Machine.

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With the newest addition to its engineered-systems family, the Exadata X3 Database Machine, Oracle is giving customers more justification to realize they need to move beyond the traditional and non-optimized systems of the past.

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