At its OpenWorld show this week, co-CEO of
Oracle, Mark Hurd, shared that the company had fully joined and was ready to
lead in the cloud. Hurd predicts that in just 10 short years, that most, if not
all data will be stored in the cloud. This statement hinges of how customers of
Oracle react.
As of right now, less than a third of the
company’s customers operate in the cloud. It is now on Oracle to find ways to
push for its customers to join the cloud. Oracle is well known as a big, cloud-based
company, and its biggest competitor is Amazon. When talking about the rival,
Amazon, founder of Oracle Larry Ellison noted that many people are buying IaaS
from Oracle because they are looking for an integrated and optimized cloud
model, including enhanced security.
This question of security brings up a topic
much talked about. The cloud, with an open Internet access seems less secure
than dedicated servers and independence among operations and companies. If
someone were to hack in and target a specific company, damage could be done.
Saying that the cloud acts as a host, in a ring type of format, if a hacker
breached into the cloud, he could then attack users connected to the cloud.
Oracle has noticed this concern, and has
begun to add a layer of technology at the database level, instead of the
application level, created a more secure environment. Oracle is also the only
cloud vendor to operate at the SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS layers, making it possible
for them to create a normalized security that works for any of the layers.
Oracle looks to be quite attractive as a
vendor in the cloud, and as such, customers should be hopeful for what is to
come. Oracle looks to be passing Amazon, SAP, and others as a secure company
operating in the cloud. The business world waits to see how Mark Hurd’s
statement plays out, and whether Oracle will truly be a leading force in the
cloud. Only time and customer actions will tell for the success of Oracle.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/oracle/2015/01/20/larry-ellison-and-mark-hurd-oracles-10-point-plan-to-be-1-in-the-cloud/
Oracle's new cloud service isn't meant for the same crowd as Amazon's AWS, where a developer can quickly get started after paying for it with a credit card. Rather, it's for Oracle's existing enterprise customers who want to shift existing workloads to the cloud. So their targeted customers are not the same as Amazon's. Furthermore, even if they were competing for the same customers, one of the more important factors for customers is usually cost. In order for them to truly compete with Amazon, they would have to make sure that their costs (at the very least) are the same as Amazon's prices. Another thing to consider, is that since it claims to have more levels of security, does that mean that it also takes more bandwidth, more data, and ultimately more time to load and operate? Furthermore, Amazon has already built up a lot of brand loyalty among every day people, as well as companies around the world, so it will be difficult for Oracle to compete with that well established familiarity.
ReplyDeleteI believe that this idea for a new cloud service could be very beneficial, however; as you mentioned, only one third of the customers are using it as of right now. One way that the company could get all customers to use the cloud would be to provide discounted products for people who chose to use the cloud. To add to Casey's statement, Oracle and Amazon have two completely different types of customers. This means that Oracle's strategy to attract customers to the cloud should be different than Amazon's. Oracle, unlike Amazon, does not attract everyday people. Both organizations attract businesses. However, if Oracle could find a way to be more attractive to businesses than Amazon, they could surpass them.
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