In a , Monash said that Oracle has long had problems selling to small and mid-size firms because its products have been too difficult and costly to administer.

While the appliance will help, "it's not any kind of game-changer, because the issues relate to the antique design of the Oracle DBMS," Monash said.

Jaikumar Vijayan covers data security and privacy issues, financial services security and e-voting for Computerworld. Follow Jaikumar on Twitter at , or subscribe to . His e-mail address is .

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