Oracle Readies Launch Of Public Cloud

Oracle will use a media event at its Redwood City campus on 6 June to officially launch its public cloud service.

The site is already up and running; and can be accessed here.

Enterprise Cloud

Registration requests currently are being taken for the various subscription-based application services, which include Fusion CRM (customer resource management), Fusion HCM (human capital management), and Oracle Social Network – a response to Salesforce’s Chatter.

Platform services include Java and Database. Yes, that’s the heavy-duty Oracle database in the form of a secure cloud service, available for a subscription.

The launch event will be Webcast 6 June from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. Pacific Time. Go here to register.

Oracle has been stockpiling services over the years for on-premises, server-based deployments, such as Siebel Systems, JD Edwards, Hyperion and PeopleSoft. In the last year or so, however, the company has picked up cloud-ready acquisitions such as Taleo (for its HCM), RightNow (CRM) and Endeca (data management) to add to its new arsenal.

Three-Way Strategy

In an interview last year with eWEEK’s Nick Kolakowski, Steve Miranda, Oracle’s senior vice president of application development, said that the company had three different angles in the cloud: one as a cloud-infrastructure provider, another as a cloud-application vendor, and a third as a cloud host.

“We think where we’re unique is the ability to provide all three,” he said.

Oracle offers Fusion Applications via on-premises, private cloud, public cloud, or some combination of those. The applications offer capabilities with more than 100 modules in seven product families, including the aforementioned Human Capital Management, Customer Relationship Management and Supply Chain Management.

The company has also introduced cloud-based application programming interfaces (APIs) for interoperability, ensuring that workloads can be moved safely between clouds. The Oracle Cloud Resource Model API, a subset of Cloud API, relies on standard HTTP methods to interact with available resources to provision machines and modify configurations. It encourages standardisation across the standard building blocks of the cloud, i.e., machines, storage volumes, and networks.

On the cloud hardware side, Oracle also launched in the Autumn of 2010 a new system that allows companies to operate a private cloud within a self-contained system. The Exalogic Elastic Compute Cloud, also known as “cloud in a box,” features 30 servers with 360 cores, in addition to networking and storage, married to Oracle’s virtual machine (VM) technology operating in conjunction with Solaris and Linux assets.

Cloud Competition

Even as it moves aggressively into the cloud space, Oracle finds itself competing head-to-head for business dollars with IBM, which provides similar services, and smaller companies like Salesforce.com, which have centred their competitive strategy on the cloud. Microsoft’s increasing interest in providing cloud services for business via Azure is another area of potential concern for Oracle.

“We’ve been in this situation a long time. We’re sometimes a supplier, a customer and a competitor,” Miranda said. “We know [customers] have a choice, it’s a highly competitive market, and we have to be best in class.”

Editor’s note: Some information in this story was supplied by eWEEK reporters Nick Kolakowski and Darryl K. Taft.

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