Oracle Takes its Public Cloud Live

Oracle Takes its Public Cloud Live

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Author:  Mike Anderson

Topic: Workplace

Issues: What technologies and architectures should enterprises leverage in the workplace?

Summary:  Oracle Cloud provides subscription based self-service access to over 100 enterprise application, social, middleware and database services.

Event: Oracle CEO Larry Ellison used an executive strategy update on June 6^th to fill out details of the company’s public cloud portfolio, and promote its availability. More than 100 enterprise applications have been rewritten over six years to allow them to run either on-premise or in the cloud, and on Oracle’s cloud data centers built on Oracle Exadata and Oracle Exalogic.

Analysis: In October 2011 Oracle announced its cloud direction and strategy to provide its platform, middleware and applications software for both on-premise and cloud delivery. With availability of Oracle Cloud, Oracle now has one of the broadest and most comprehensive offerings for the cloud. In addition to strong support for cloud developers and applications from ERP and CRM to Talent and HCM, Oracle Social Network provides both a social platform and a social layer for enterprises.

One strength Oracle offers is that the breadth of its application and platform services is deliverable not only in Oracle Cloud, but on-premises, as private clouds, and in hybrid deployments. The same functionality and code base are used for both cloud and on-premises. Enterprises can choose to deploy using Oracle Cloud, and decide later to move to on-premise implementation. This option is likely to help overcome some cloud objections, and motivate those businesses that have been slower to move to the cloud to take their initial steps with Oracle.

Oracle claims that 150 new customers sign up for Oracle Cloud each week, and the company will continue to expand datacenters globally. A datacenter in Austin and one in Scotland are the only ones live for Oracle Cloud, with more expected to open in EMEA and APAC later in 2012.

Currently, the public cloud is in a controlled availability. Some applications, like Oracle Fusion HCM and Oracle Fusion CRM, RightNow, and Taleo, are generally available and deployed in production. Others, including Oracle Social Network and the Java and database services, are being used by customers but are not open to self-service ordering and provisioning. Some platform services including documents, analytics, sites, web and mobile remain in a preview mode, in controlled testing by early adopters.

As the network, services and Oracle’s sales organization all ramp up, the self-service and self-provisioning capabilities will be enabled. Pricing is not yet provided on the registration site, and signing up requires contact from Oracle’s sales organization. It is expected that the ability for online signup and purchasing for platform services and applications will be available by September 2012 through Oracle Store.

Oracle also announced Oracle Platinum Services, offering 24×7 fault monitoring and highly responsive resolution. For customers with Oracle’s Premier support and specific configurations, fault notification is provided in 5 minutes and restoration (or escalation if needed) in 15 minutes. Having Oracle products from end to end in Oracle Cloud will enable improved visibility to problems and the ability to streamline resolution paths.

The client strategy for Oracle Cloud is to enable on any type of device, including desktop, laptop, tablet and mobile phone. Any browser provides access, and mobile clients will be enabled through both native apps and HTML5. Presently only iOS is supported, but Android is expected later in 2012.

Aragon Advisory: Overall, Oracle’s strategy is a strong response to the cloud opportunity and gives Oracle an effective presence for public and hybrid cloud deployment.

Oracle’s approach to multi-tenancy is different from its main cloud competition, building instead on individual virtual machines and separate database instances for customers. While this potentially offers value to customers concerned with the comingling of data and traffic, it has the potential to disrupt Oracle Cloud longer term as overall volumes of customers expand.

Enterprises invested in Oracle software should evaluate Oracle Cloud options in relation to their growth and migration strategies.