Oracle prepares its booth for a new era of multicloud | COMPUTER PRO

The decision to change the name of Oracle’s flagship technology conference from “OpenWorld” to “CloudWorld” doesn’t quite sum up its new business strategy. There is also no official explanation for the change; we’re just left to assume it’s all about more emphasis on cloud-based technologies. Despite the name change, Oracle’s attitude toward the cloud is now more open than ever.

A better description of what is happening came from one of his partners; In the keynote address to this year’s conference, the CIO of Irish security firm Johnson Controls, Diane Schwarz, used an old African proverb: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go further, go together”.

Today, there are three well-defined leaders in the cloud market – Amazon Web Service (AWS), Microsoft and Google – and some might suggest that Oracle is not necessarily the fourth biggest, with Alibaba and IBM coming also jostle for position. Oracle, however, could have identified a winning strategy for breaking into that higher tier by working, ironically, with the other vendors. Or, to put it another way, by being more open.

A future of connected clouds

Using multiple cloud services (purchasing applications and infrastructure from different vendors) has become more popular than some vendors would like. After all, multi and hybrid cloud scenarios haven’t always been championed by major vendors, including Oracle, and that’s something Larry Ellison would like to change.

During his afternoon keynote, Oracle’s CTO suggested that cloud environments are more like walled gardens, where the customer puts in data, often for free, but then gets penalized if they wants to remove or move them – a process that is known. as exit fees.

Nearly every major cloud provider has at some point charged for data egress, although many in the industry see it as a brake on innovation. This is especially troublesome for small businesses, as it’s nearly impossible to predict the total cost of data management. In his keynote, Ellison called for exit fees to be eradicated and for “the garden walls to come down.”

There were a lot of references to AWS in this segment of the keynote, which may have involved some degree of chatter in the past. This time, it felt more like a new approach for Oracle, at odds with an industry notorious for its vendor lock-in. From start to finish, Oracle CloudWorld seemed like a great pitch for a more open and interoperable cloud marketplace. The company invests heavily in a portfolio of services that can be connected to those of other cloud providers, even those owned by its biggest rivals.

A good example of this is the Oracle and Microsoft multi-cloud agreement – Oracle Interconnect for Azure. It’s described as a “simple” path to a multi-cloud environment, with customers able to use Oracle database services, such as MySQL, within Azure over a low-latency connection. In his speech, Ellison suggested that Oracle would seek to establish more of these connections, to the benefit of the customer. He sees it as the next logical step in cloud computing, dubbing it “a cloud internet.”

The infrastructure of success

There’s one thing that could potentially derail Oracle’s big connected cloud plan, and that’s the willingness of other vendors to open up their systems. Oracle’s main leverage is customer demand, and that’s certainly a powerful incentive. It also seems like such a simple idea, it’s almost unbelievable how long it took to happen.

At the heart of Oracle’s plan is Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), which is a holistic cloud platform that provides all the controls and tools customers need to build, migrate, and deploy cloud technologies. OCI Vice President Leo Leung told us that the technology for cloud providers to connect has always been there and it’s just a case of industry will.

Big companies like Nvidia, Vodafone and Red Bull all use OCI in one form or another as a platform to build their own cloud applications – all three are also customers of other cloud providers. Vodafone, for example, uses a combination of AWS, Google Cloud and Oracle.

Oracle Alloy is another fascinating product; it’s a platform that allows other companies to essentially become their own cloud providers. Again, Oracle provides the infrastructure and the customer uses it to build or enhance their cloud offerings. These are products that provide a platform but not a limitation because Oracle has recognized that choice is an attractive offering.

As Oracle CloudWorld 2022 drew to a close, it was hard not to be impressed. As to whether it will work, only time will tell. Could we see the end of vendor lock-in and exit fees in the cloud marketplace? Stranger things have happened, as they say, or as an Oracle exec said, referring to a new Amazon collaboration with MySQL Heatwave; “Working with AWS…something we would have thought impossible a few years ago.”