Google’s Android is by far the most popular mobile operating system (OS) on the plant. According to Oracle, however, it’s built at least in part on stolen code. Oracle filed a copyright suit nearly a decade ago, claiming Google stole code for its mobile OS.
Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, the creator of the Java Virtual Machine (VM) in 2010. The Java VM is an environment that runs on a wide range of platforms, such as Windows, Linux, macOS and embedded devices. Java developers then create programs that run within the Java VM, rather than having to create them specifically for each platform. The VM gives developers the ability to “write once, run everywhere.”
Oracle has accused Google of copying 11,500 lines of Java code in its creation of Android. Two lower courts sided with Google, until the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit handed Oracle a victory. Now, according to TheStreet.com, the Supreme Court “will hear Google LLC v. Oracle America Inc., granting the case a write of certiorari, or an order to review the decision of the lower court that originally ruled on the case.”
While one might think software companies would be rooting for Oracle, Microsoft and Mozilla are just two of a number of companies who have filed friends of the court briefs in favor of Google. Both have argued that copyright law must allow a reasonable amount of reuse of software’s “functional aspects,” especially to insure compatibility and interoperability.
Whatever the outcome, tech companies throughout the U.S. will be watching the case closely to see what precedent is set.
Microsoft made headlines several weeks ago when it beat out Amazon for a lucrative Pentagon contract worth some $10 billion. Now, according to ABC News, Amazon is protesting the decision, saying there was “unmistakable bias” in the selection process.
Oracle and IBM were both eliminated during an earlier phase of the process, leaving only Microsoft and Amazon. Amazon was widely considered to be the front-runner to receive the Pentagon contract, in large part because of how far ahead it is in the overall cloud market. After President Trump, as well as its rivals, criticized Amazon, Microsoft won the bid.
In response, Amazon has filed a protest with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, citing what it described as “clear deficiencies, errors, and unmistakable bias.” By filing with the Court of Federal Claims, Amazon will have access to government documents in an effort to make its case.
Whether Amazon will be able to change the outcome of the decision remains to be seen, although experts are not optimistic. While Amazon has nothing to lose by challenging the results, and President Trumps comments have been labeled “inappropriate and improvident,” experts believe it will be difficult to make a case that the White House applied enough pressure to sway the final outcome.
Oracle is boosting its cloud efforts with an announcement that it is hiring some 2,000 new employees. While Amazon, Microsoft and, to some extent, Google have dominated the cloud market, Oracle sees ongoing opportunity to expand.
Oracle has been making moves to take on the leaders, including opening offices in Microsoft’s back yard. Even more surprising, earlier this year Oracle announced a cloud partnership with Microsoft, working to ensure their products work seamlessly across each other’s cloud platforms.
As Oracle continues its cloud expansion, the company is counting on the relative infancy of the market, along with the overall lack of penetration. In addition, Oracle is uniquely positioned to deliver the entire range of cloud service.
“Cloud is still in its early days with less than 20 percent penetration today, and enterprises are just beginning to use cloud for mission-critical workloads,” said Don Johnson, executive vice president, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. “Our aggressive hiring and growth plans are mapped to meet the needs of our customers, providing them reliability, high performance, and robust security as they continue to move to the cloud.”
Oracle currently operates 16 cloud regions globally, with 12 of those being added in the past year. The company plans to add an additional 20 regions by the end of 2020, no doubt with the help of the 2,000 additional hires. By focusing on adding more regions, Oracle stands to gain strong footholds in regional and niche markets that the Big Three haven’t wrapped up.
“Eleven countries or jurisdictions will have region pairs that facilitate enterprise-class, multi-region, disaster-recovery strategies to better support those customers who want to store their data in-country or in-region.
“Today, Oracle is the only company delivering a complete and integrated set of cloud services and building intelligence into every layer of the cloud. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s growing talent base will ensure customers continue to benefit from best-in-class security, consistent high performance, simple predictable pricing, and the tools and expertise needed to bring enterprise workloads to cloud quickly and efficiently.
“In addition to rapid hiring, Oracle will make additional real estate investments to support the expanded Oracle Cloud Infrastructure workforce.”
Oracle co-CEO Mark Hurd has died from an undisclosed illness. He was only 62 years old. Hurd had stepped down from his CEO role at Oracle on September 11, just prior to Oracle’s annual Open World conference. Hurd was previously CEO of HP prior to going to Oracle.
Hurd was a key proponent and driver of Oracle’s move to the cloud. He was passionate in how this is a key transformational time for Oracle and for business:
We have a big existing on-premise user base and I believe all of them will move (to the cloud). In fact, I was with a large group of our users just last night and they’re all going to move on their time frame. We don’t put a time frame on it, but this thing is moving at a pretty good speed. It will not move linearly, it will move geometrically. When we get to a certain point you will start to see a geometric move in the market and it will be significant.
The applications market is about $125 billion per year. That is spent primarily on applications and most of it today is spent on on-premise applications. That market changes pretty significantly as it moves to cloud.
”There is a couple of phenomena going on at the same time. The applications market is about $125 billion per year. That is spent primarily on applications and most of it today is spent on on-premise applications. That market changes pretty significantly as it moves to cloud. As it moves to cloud, the subscription that you pay for the cloud includes not only the application but includes all of the hardware, the servers, and storage. It becomes a bigger market just by the very nature of the migration of the application to SAAS.
Our strategy is to lead the applications market as it moves to the cloud and lead the movement of database technology as it moves to the cloud. I think our strategy is irrefutable. That said, almost everything in our company is at some stage in transition, moving from the old model to the new model. The company is going to grow its revenue and applications is just one example of that.
Oracle recently announced an investment in chip startup Ampere. Ampere is run by Renee James, a former Intel executive who served as president of the company from 2013 till her departure in 2016, and currently serves on Oracle’s board.
Ampere Computing develops microprocessors for cloud servers. Their processors are based on the chips designed by ARM Holdings, a rival of Intel and AMD. ARM processors, widely used in tablets and phones, are known for delivering substantial speed with minimal heat and power consumption.
Ampere hopes to harness those qualities and apply their benefits to cloud servers. The goal is to produce cloud servers that provide “higher density and higher bandwidth, and with a significant reduction in power consumption and operating costs.”
Now, in Oracle’s proxy, they have outlined the extent of their investment:
“In April 2019, Oracle invested $40 million in an equity fundraising round for Ampere Computing LLC (Ampere), a developer of high-performance microprocessors for cloud and edge servers. Renée J. James, an Oracle director, is the Chairman and CEO of Ampere. Oracle has appointed one director to Ampere’s board. Oracle holds less than 20% of the outstanding equity of Ampere.
“In fiscal 2019, Oracle paid Ampere approximately $419,000 for hardware used for development and testing purposes.”
It’s no secret that Oracle has its sights set on the cloud infrastructure market, which is currently dominated by Microsoft and Amazon. Oracle’s latest attempt to pry open the market is their most ambitious yet.
On September 16, Oracle announced a new, free tier of cloud services, paired with credits developers can use for additional options. Free plans come with two virtual machines with 1/8 OCPU and 1 GB of memory each, along with the choice of Autonomous Transaction Processing or Autonomous Data Warehouse. This gives developers two databases, each with 1 OCPU and 20 GB of storage.
The Oracle Cloud Free Trial Credits, a $300 value, can be used on infrastructure, databases, application development, analytics, content, and experience, management and security or integration.
Until now, Oracle has had little success convincing developers to jump ship from Microsoft or Amazon. These new plans, however, could be a game-changer. The goal is to provide a way for developers to try Oracle’s services risk-free, instead of being forced to choose between committing to an untested solution or going with one of the industry leaders.
The Autonomous Database feature, in particular, is sure to drive growth. The feature has already been a solid hit with existing customers and offers companies with on-premise databases a clear path to the cloud.
Even if Oracle’s free tier of services doesn’t unseat one of the established leaders, it should help the company carve out a healthy segment of the market.
“Every Enterprise has the security it deserves,” says Oracle Chief Information Officer Mark Sunday. “It begins at the very top. It truly begins with the board, CEO, and the Executive Committee to set the culture and to ensure that the people, process, technology, and the governance processes are in place to ensure the security of customers, companies, and employees information.”
Mark Sunday, CIO of Oracle, discussed the increasing need for enterprises to take a holistic, comprehensive, and automated approach towards information security in an interview with Michael Krigsman of CXOTALK:
Security is Increasingly a Big Part of the Discussion
It’s really been interesting to see the dramatic change in the awareness around security. Quite frankly, the threats have gotten much greater. Security is increasingly a big part of the discussion. If I look at the one area that my organization has increased year on year on year, it’s what we’re investing in security. We’re the norm in that. We’re not the exception. Then also the increased sophistication of the threats, the increased sophistication of the tooling, and so forth required, is putting more and more focus on this. It really becomes job one.
I think that boards have now become aware and that they are accountable to assure that the people, the processes, the technology, that all the steps that one needs to do in order to ensure the integrity, confidentially, privacy, and security, of not only a customer’s data, the company’s data, but in fact the employees data as well.
Security is Not Just the Role of the CIO
Security is getting its place at the table, whether it’s within the IT organizations, at the corporate level, or at the board level. Security has always been something that’s been out there, something that we’ve had to take into account, but more recently there have certainly been more high profile incidents that have highlighted just what the impact of security can have. But also it’s been highlighted that you need to have the focus that security is not just the role of the CIO, not just the role of the CISO, but it’s everyone’s responsibility.
It begins with making people aware of what they need to do, what the threats and the vulnerabilities are, and what their role is in defending against that. Security needs to be built into every line of code we write, every configuration we enable, every computer that we manage the configuration asset the patching level on and the updates on. It affects essentially most roles within the organization.
Every Enterprise Has the Security it Deserves
Just given the scale, size, complexity, and the opportunity for human error, you really need to take a holistic, comprehensive, and automated approach towards how you deal with configuration management, change management, and vulnerability management. All of these are key aspects. It’s very difficult if it’s done you know manually. You have to look at a comprehensive program that allows you to simplify, standardize, centralize, and automate all the aspects of how you deal with those things that you know could expose your company to security and privacy concerns.
Every Enterprise has the security it deserves. It begins at the very top. It truly begins with the board, CEO, the Executive Committee, to set the culture and to ensure that the people, process, technology, and the governance processes are in place to ensure the security of customers, companies, and employees information.
Oracle CIO Mark Sunday: Every Enterprise Has the Security it Deserves
“What’s interesting is that IoT has been around for a long time but as companies start to enable it and start to leverage it more and more there’s just huge volumes of data that have to be managed and be able to analyze and be able to execute from,” says John Barcus, Vice President Manufacturing Industries at Oracle. “One of the technologies that is really exciting is this whole concept of AI. It really allows you to use that information and correlate it with a lot of different pieces of information.”
John Barcus, Vice President Manufacturing Industries at Oracle, discusses how technologies such as AI and blockchain are now helping companies manage huge volumes of IoT data in an interview with technology influencerRonald van Loon:
Companies Are Moving Toward Selling Products as a Service
I think that (manufacturers connecting all the processes digitally) is the way that will differentiate them. It’s really the only way the companies will be able to survive into the future. There are all these business models and it has become significantly more competitive than it has been in the past. Companies have to work faster and they have to be more responsive to what their customer needs are. The only way really of doing that is to connect the various aspects of the business. They can’t work in silos anymore. That really will give you the whole value of the business.
One area that companies are moving away from is selling products. They’re going into selling more services which we’ve actually seen for some time. But what they’re now getting into is these new models where they might be selling products as a service. If you think about how do you sell a product as a service and the ability to support that it is a lot different than it was before. Connecting to that product and being able to anticipate activities, anticipate needs, anticipate failures, and to be able to monitor how it’s performing, how the customers use it and are able to expand on that to be able to provide a better outcome for the customer are important components.
Huge Volume of IoT Data Managed via AI Creates Real Value
What’s interesting is that IoT has been around for a long time but as companies start to enable it and start to leverage it more and more there’s just huge volumes of data that have to be managed and be able to analyze and be able to execute from. One of the technologies that is really exciting is this whole concept of AI. It really allows you to use that information and correlate it with a lot of different pieces of information. You can correlate with the data that might be in your ERP and your MES and other sources of information and actually provide some real value and provide the real outcomes. It can now do some predictions where it would be actually physically impossible for people to do the same type of calculations that they’ve been doing in the past with this huge volume today.
The second area where there seems to be a little hesitation at the moment is around blockchain. But the technology is there and people have been trying to identify how best to use it. Some of the use cases that are coming out now are going to be quite impressive. I think the little bit of a lull was deserved. People who looked at it anticipate a little bit more than what was possible and now they’re really starting to develop some good use cases. I think there’s a lot of opportunities in that area.
Huge Volume of IoT Data Managed via AI Creates Real Value, Says Oracle VP John Barcus
“The applications market is about $125 billion per year,” says Oracle CEO Mark Hurd. “That is spent primarily on applications and most of it today is spent on on-premise applications. That market changes pretty significantly as it moves to cloud. As it moves to cloud, the subscription that you pay for the cloud includes not only the application but includes all of the hardware, the servers, and storage. It becomes a bigger market just by the very nature of the migration of the application to SAAS.”
Recently, Hurd noted that all of their current customers will eventually move to the cloud. “We have a big existing on-premise user base and I believe all of them will move to the cloud,” said Oracle CEO Mark Hurd. “In fact, I was with a large group of our users just last night and they’re all going to move on their time frame. When we get to a certain point you will start to see a geometric move in the market and it will be significant.”
Mark Hurd, CEO of Oracle, discusses their NetSuite acquisition and the growing size of the applications market as it moves to the cloud in an interview on Fox Business. Hurd was in Las Vegas for the Oracle NetSuite SuiteWorld event:
NetSuite Acquisition Has Been an Amazing Success
We’ve invested a lot in the applications market. We’ve invested in big and small segments of the market. Big customers and small customers. We acquired NetSuite about two and a half years ago it’s really been an amazing success. There are roughly 10,000 customers here (in Las Vegas) for our event (Oracle NetSuite SuiteWorld). It is very exciting.
When we bought NetSuite the company was growing about 16 percent in revenue. We’ve invested a lot in R&D and in tailoring the application for more industries. We’ve added sales people as well. It has resulted in incredible growth. Starting about a year ago we began to really grow our booking and that’s now translated to revenue. Last quarter we reported revenue that was almost double the revenue growth we had coming into the acquisition.
Applications Market Changes Significantly As It Moves to Cloud
There is a couple of phenomena going on at the same time. The applications market is about $125 billion per year. That is spent primarily on applications and most of it today is spent on on-premise applications. That market changes pretty significantly as it moves to cloud. As it moves to cloud, the subscription that you pay for the cloud includes not only the application but includes all of the hardware, the servers, and storage. It becomes a bigger market just by the very nature of the migration of the application to SAAS.
Inside that $125 billion about $75 billion is back office. That would be described as things like general ledger, accounting, supply chain, procurement, and HR. The other 30 percent is front office including things like sales automation and marketing automation. NetSuite has played in the mid-market, small customer side of that back office market. It’s had explosive growth. When you ask who’s moving (to the cloud), it’s really everybody from the biggest guys, whether those be as big as an AT&T all the way to your smaller startup.
If you look today, half of the cloud application customers (and revenue) that we have came from our base and half came from outside.
Oracle CEO Mark Hurd – Application Market Changes as it Moves to Cloud
“We have a big existing on-premise user base and I believe all of them will move (to the cloud),” said Oracle CEO Mark Hurd. “In fact, I was with a large group of our users just last night and they’re all going to move on their time frame. We don’t put a time frame on it, but this thing is moving at a pretty good speed. It will not move linearly, it will move geometrically. When we get to a certain point you will start to see a geometric move in the market and it will be significant.”
Mark Hurd, CEO of Oracle, discussed the huge growth in the cloud applications market and he expects Oracle to lead that market in an interview on Bloomberg:
Cloud Applications Will Become a $400 Billion Market
The apps market is about a $125 billion market. It has two pieces to it. First is back office, which is what we call ERP. This is basically your financial systems, procurement, manufacturing, supply chain, and HR. That is really 70 percent of the applications market or around $85 billion. Second is the front office market which includes marketing, sales automation, service, etc. add up to $40 billion. A very interesting phenomenon is that as the on-premise applications market moves into SAAS it actually grows exponentially. Now the applications market is doing all of the server work, all the operating systems, and all the database work. It’s the data center, it’s the people. So the market will actually grow from $125 billion and probably triple just as it moves to SAAS because it’s taking share from the other parts of the IT market. The applications market I predict will actually become more like $400 billion as it goes forward.
We think it is an amazing opportunity. We are growing our applications market over the last 8-12 quarters more than double-digit. The market itself is growing and we are gaining substantive share. We are the leader in ERP. If you go back to Gartner, IDC, and the analysts we are leading in HR now as well. These are very attractive and robust markets. Our customers want to modernize, want to spend less, want someone else doing the work, and they want someone else assuming the risk. We are extremely bullish about our position in the market.
All of Our Customers Will Move to the Cloud
We have rewritten our application base for the cloud, for SAAS. We have been doing this for years and we’ve invested a lot of capital. We are deploying our capabilities all across the globe. We are extremely excited and bullish about not just our current position. There is going to be a leader in this market and there is no one today with more than 50 percent market share. In fact, the highest application percentage of any company in any segment is sort of mid-20s. This generation will see a leader that is much more material than that and I volunteer us to do it. In most segments, the leader has 50 percent plus.
We have a big existing on-premise user base and I believe all of them will move to the cloud. In fact, I was with a large group of our users just last night and they’re all going to move. They are all going to move on their time frame. We don’t actually put an end of life. We have a competitor that does that, but we don’t do that. We want them to move at their pace and we want them to feel good about it. We don’t put a time frame on it, but this thing is moving at a pretty good speed. It will not move linearly, it will move geometrically. When we get to a certain point you will start to see a geometric move in the market and it will be significant.
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison says that Amazon does not even use their own database to run their business. “Amazon runs their entire business on top of Oracle, on top of the Oracle Database,” Ellison said. “They have been unable to migrate to AWS because it is not good enough.”
Larry Ellison, Oracle co-founder, discussed why Oracle is still the best database in the world and why it’s significantly better than Amazon and SAP databases in an interview this morning:
Amazon Does Not Use AWS to Run Their Business
Sometimes I liken the computer industry to the fashion industry. Certain brands get popular, certain brands get unpopular. IBM when I first came into the industry was the ultimate brand. It was not a company against whom you would compete, it was the environment which you would compete. Amazon now is the number one brand in infrastructure cloud computing.
Let me tell you an interesting fact. Amazon does not use AWS to run their business. Amazon runs their entire business on top of Oracle, on top of the Oracle Database. They have been unable to migrate to AWS because it is not good enough. I keep saying this because they just spent another 50 million dollars last year buying still more Oracle Database. I keep saying this because well maybe our database is better than Amazon’s databases. Why else would Amazon keep buying our database?
Last year they bravely said that they are sick of these comments of mine and they are going to move off of Oracle. They said they are going to move off of Oracle by 2020. Well guess what, they took their first step, they just moved a bunch of their warehouses off of Oracle and guess what happened. I will send you a copy of Amazon’s internal memo. It went down. It failed. They had a huge outage. They said that if they would have stayed with the Oracle Database this wouldn’t have happened.
All of the World’s Most Valuable Data Runs on Oracle, Not Amazon
The Oracle Database manages most of the world’s data, today and ten years ago. Nothing has changed. All of the world’s important valuable data is in an Oracle Database. They’re not in Amazon’s database. Amazon won’t use its own database to run its business.
So if our database is so great what have we done wrong? We didn’t get our database to the cloud quickly enough. If you wanted a cloud database, you had to go to Amazon for a database. Then you were able to go to Microsoft for a database. It took a while for us to build a secure cloud. It’s really hard to build a secure cloud. We think we are there now.
We have by far and away the best database in the world. Nothing is close. We show a series of benchmarks where we are ten times faster than Amazon. More importantly, we are ten times cheaper to run the same exact thing on Amazon on our database. So if you want all that security and want all that reliability, you have to be able to spend less. That’s what we’ve shown in a series of benchmarks. Even Amazon can’t move.
People say that Oracle has no chance in database and Amazon’s going to dominate everything, well you would think that one of the early customers that Amazon would move, how about Amazon. No, Amazon picked Oracle.
We Have a 10-20 Year Lead on Amazon
We think we have a 10-20 year lead on Amazon on databases. Let me prove it. Another thing, Amazon uses Oracle not Amazon. Amazon’s transaction processing database that they have is called Aurora. Aurora is an open source database. They just it picked up and made it closed source on Amazon. They didn’t write any of that. They picked up Aurora, put it on Amazon and made it available on their cloud. Well, so who owns Aurora? Who develops Aurora? That would be Oracle. It’s called MySQL. That’s our small open source database which they claim is their big transaction processing database that’s going to replace Oracle. It’s just preposterous that Amazon didn’t even develop the Amazon database. It’s just a chunk of open source that we are responsible for called MySQL. MySQL does not compare to the Oracle Database. There is a reason Amazon uses Oracle.
SAP Also Uses Oracle Everywhere
You know who else uses Oracle? Another company that hates us, SAP uses Oracle everywhere. SAP ten years ago said I hate Oracle, I’m getting off of Oracle, I can’t stand these guys, especially this guy that goes on TV and makes fun of us. They say we have this great new database called Hanna. It’s awesome. Well, they have all of these cloud services such as SuccessFactors. Does it run on Hanna? But oh no, it runs on Oracle. Actually, 98 percent of everything SAP does runs on Oracle. A decade later, they still use Oracle, can’t get to Hanna.
The Oracle Database beat IBM in the database business and beat Microsoft in the database business. We’ve been in this business for 20 years constantly making our database better. Now it’s the world’s first autonomous system.
The Oracle Database is Much Better Than Anyone Else Has
The EU actually did a study, of the top hundred SAP customers in Europe how many of them run the Oracle Database? Only 99 percent. One actually ran IBM DB2. All of their cloud services, whether it’s SuccessFactors, Ariba, all of these things which they’ve been trying to get off of Oracle and onto Hanna for a decade still all run Oracle. The reason is that Oracle is just a much better database than anyone else has.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was asked if I can have any other piece of software in the world what would it be? Everyone thought he was going to say Google Search. He said the Oracle Database because it’s the information age and all of the world’s most valuable information is stored in an Oracle Database.
Oracle CEO Mark Hurd says that because they have a founder like Larry Ellison they are focused on generational changes. “At the end of the day what’s in our DNA deeply is to build for the future,” said Hurd.
Mark Hurd, Oracle CEO, discussed Oracle’s growth strategy in an interview earlier today:
We have a technical strategy. It’s very important in a technology company that you have a technology strategy. When you listen to companies that say here’s our strategy, produce a lot of cash flow, buy back stock, increase our dividend… that not a technology strategy.
Lead in Cloud Applications and Database Technology
Our strategy is to lead the applications market as it moves to the cloud and lead the movement of database technology as it moves to the cloud. I think our strategy is irrefutable. That said, almost everything in our company is at some stage in transition, moving from the old model to the new model. The company is going to grow its revenue and applications is just one example of that.
Our DNA is to Build for the Future
When you have a founder like Larry Ellison he’s very focused on generational changes. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about Quarter or care about our year, but at the end of the day what’s in our DNA deeply is to build for the future.
We have in some cases given away revenue that we could have had in the interest of moving our business to where we think the market is headed. If our sole objective was to grow our revenue on a quarterly basis we wouldn’t have deemphasized many of our businesses in order to pursue where we think the market is headed years from now.
If we Were Only Focused on the Short-Term Numbers…
We wouldn’t have made the applications transition. Our applications business is now in aggregate growing double digits. We could have stayed on the old model and probably had some short-term growth better than we had when we went through the transition. But it wouldn’t be where we want to be five years from now.
We’ve pretty much played the long game at every chance to move to where the market is headed. It will result in long-term revenue growth as our legacy businesses as a percent of our revenue goes down.
We Have No Business in Oracle Growing at the Rate of Oracle
We have no business in Oracle growing at the growth rate of Oracle. We have businesses either growing 40 percent or declining 30 percent and as you mix them up you get to the result of Oracle.
As those businesses become a smaller part of our total and the growth businesses become a bigger part of the total revenue will grow. One thing you can say when you look at the numbers is that when we hit revenue growth we know how to turn it into cash flow and earnings.
There Will Be Extreme Growth for Us
Executing the applications strategy, moving our customers, and then taking other peoples customers into the more modern world of SAT, there will be extreme growth for us. The ability to move our database to Gen 2 Oracle cloud infrastructure and Autonomous Database is actually more growth opportunity than the applications business. Just executing those two things is huge for us.
Oracle’s Larry Ellison introduced the Generation 2 Cloud at Oracle OpenWorld 2018 yesterday with a primary emphasis on security. “Other clouds have been around for a long time, and they were not designed for the enterprise,” Ellison said. “We will never put our cloud control code in the same computer that has customer code.”
Oracle’s focus on security was also the theme of statements made by Oracle CEO Mark Hurd in an interview today:
Three Big Things in the Oracle Gen 2 Cloud… Security, Security, Security
It isn’t just AWS, there’s a broad set of breaches across the industry. The level of sophistication of the attacks is ever increasing, so just as our capabilities to defend are increasing so are the ability to attack. Larry’s (Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison) message started with three big things in Gen 2, security, security, security. He really hit home on the security side.
In addition to that, we focused on the evolution of our database technology, which is just as important in the context of the entire Gen 2 approach. This is the most exciting database release we’ve had in concert with Gen 2 in the history of the company. This autonomous self-driving database.
The Autonomous Self-Driving Database
When we release a patch to the database of a vulnerability that gets patched it typically takes six to nine months for our customers to implement those through their entire ecosystem. This now gets done automatically. You automatically get the protection of the patch with the push of a button.
The ability now to do this, the ability now to auto-tune the database, these are huge improvements in the database that we’ve never seen before in concert with Gen 2.
Apps Are 25-30 Percent of the Business
Apps are about 25 to 30 percent of the business. It’s growing double digits, that’s a holistic number for the applications business across all of Oracle whether it’s our support, SAS, and SAS is, of course, driving all of that plus some. Now in TAC what we did in Q2 of last year we introduced a concept called bring your own license (BYOL). That had the effect of making a license portable, whether using in your data center or whether you’re using it in the cloud.
The impact of that was our license revenue actually went up. People decided to buy more of those licenses the traditional way if you would for a couple of reasons. One is our customers have a hard time predicting the workload that’ll be on-premise versus the cloud. Will it change four or five percent? I don’t know. Therefore, I’ll buy a traditional license which caused our licenses to go up and what you would think of as our non-SAS platform revenue to actually not grow as fast as it was previously.
Oracle Will Have Data Center Capabilities in the Middle East.
The Middle East as a region is a very strong region for Oracle and we will have a data center in the Middle East. Whether that’s in UAE, whether that’s in some other part of the Middle East, we’ll see. But we will put a data center capability in the Middle East. We always like to have all the facts (Regarding the Kashoggi allegations) before we jump to any conclusions. We have some and certainly, we’ll look to get all those facts. That said if some of these things were true obviously that would be of great concern to us.
Again, it’s an important region for us and I don’t want to take one action and paint a picture across an entire region. There’s an entire region of very good customers and we will have some data center capabilities in the Middle East.
Oracle just released a new video commercial for the Oracle Autonomous Database featuring Oracle co-founder, executive chairman, and chief technology officer Larry Ellison:
The world’s first and only fully autonomous database. Oracle Autonomous Database is 100% self-driving. It needs no human intervention. The Oracle autonomous database continuously tunes itself. This makes it faster and much cheaper to operate. It will automatically scale itself up as the demands on the system go up and will automatically scale itself down so when there isn’t a lot of demand on the system you’re not paying for what you don’t use.
We are using machine learning to make our software self-driving. We have to automate our cyber defenses. The Oracle autonomous database automates the entire thing. A much more reliable system. A much more secure system. The system that protects against data theft. The system that’s up 99.995% at a time and a system that makes you and your developers dramatically more productive.
“This is a generational release for us as we bring it to market.”
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison has previously said about the database:
“The cool thing about the Autonomous Database Cloud is because it is autonomous the database is fully automated. Human Beings don’t create the database, the database creates itself. Human Beings don’t tune the database, the database tunes itself.”
Last week, Cloudera and Hortonworks announced that the companies were merging to “create the world’s leading next-generation data platform provider, spanning multi-cloud, on-premises, and the Edge.” Cloudera CEO Tom Reilly says that providing technology to help manage the huge volume of data generated from the Internet of Things is where “Cloudera is going to compete and that’s how we become the next Oracle of the future. “
Tom Reilly, CEO of Cloudera, discussed the Hortonworks merger and how they plan to become the next Oracle type company in an interview with Jim Cramer on Mad Money:
This is a Wonderful Merger
This is a wonderful merger. Basically, by bringing these two companies together we are creating immense shareholder value. Our plans are that by 2020, just around the corner, our combined company Cloudera plus Hortonworks will be greater than a billion dollars in annual revenues, will be greater than 20 percent year-over-year growth, and will have greater than 15% operating cash flow margins. The amount of shareholder value we will create by bringing us together is immense.
Profitability of the combined company is our goal. This has been a rivalry that’s going on for nearly 10 years. We have been going at it really hard against each other and that has made us both better. Competition is wonderful, but now there’s a new set of competitors that we can combine ourselves to be a much stronger company at greater scale and we can take on a new set of competitors, and a lot of it are these cloud guys, where we are extremely well positioned to win in a different market.
What Does Cloudera Do?
Samsung Electronics, like all other manufacturers, are instrumenting and connecting the devices they create to the Internet. It’s called the Internet of Things. Every car, every cell phone, everything through a supply chain is being instrumented including autonomous vehicles. We sell technology for our customers to collect all that data and use machine learning and artificial intelligence to understand better how products are being used and to make them more efficient or to build autonomous vehicles. This is what we do. Cloudera and Hortonworks allow us to deliver an enterprise data cloud from the Edge where data comes from all the way to AI, getting insight out of that data.
Merger is a Win-Win for Everyone
This merger is a win-win for everyone. All of our customers are happy, all of our partners are happy, and yes our partner systems is going to get larger because Cloudera has some unique partnerships and relationships as does Hortonworks. Regarding our IBM partnership, Hortonworks and IBM have had a wonderful strategic partnership.
The new Cloudera is going to embrace that partnership much like we Cloudera have had a wonderful relationship with Intel. Now we’re going to bring in the Hortonworks customer base and they’re going to get the benefits of our relationship with Intel. We intend this to be a win-win not only for our shareholders, our partners, our customers, and all of our employees.
How We Become the Next Oracle
A lot of the excitement about this merger is people expect us to be the next Oracle. That doesn’t mean we’re replacing Oracle legacy business or their traditional business. No, the world is changing with this Internet of Things. Data is of much more volume and people want to do artificial intelligence machine learning against that data. That’s where we’re going to compete and that’s how we become the next Oracle of the future.
The fact of the matter is Oracle is a good partner of ours. Oracle has resold Qatar our software for a long time and we’re excited about what Oracle is doing in the cloud and we intend to work with them there. Cloudera plus Hortonworks working together will be the only provider delivering our software across all the major cloud guys. We work on Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and the IBM cloud and that’s our value proposition, enterprises they can work across all the cloud providers.
Identity as a platform on the cloud is hot, hot, hot. Companies of all sizes are seeing identity management in the cloud as the future of online security. Many of the major tech companies have entered this space including Oracle, Google, AWS, IBM, and smaller competitors such as OneLogin as well. One company that is all about the identity cloud and is technology agnostic is Okta.
Recently, Okta CEO and co-founder Todd McKinnon talked about their unique platform called the Identity Cloud on CNBC Squawk Box:
Identity Cloud Connects All Technology
Our platform is called the Identity Cloud and what that means is it’s a cloud service that connects all of the technology that you can use at work or a customer uses on your website. It is easy for them to log in and makes it very secure and gives company visibility as to what’s happening with technology.
Every company is thinking about how they can use more technology, how they can do it securely, and how they can make everyone the most productive in their environment and we’re right in the middle of that.
Identity Now Has to be Its Own Platform
This generation of technology, cloud, and mobile, is different from past generations in that in every generation before identity has been part of other platforms, whether it was Windows or Oracle. Now, the pervasiveness of this idea of everyone needing to connect to everything and everything going online and everything going mobile has made it where identity needs to be its own platform.
You have to be able to trust Identity to connect you to all the different technologies you want to use so that you are not beholden to one platform.
Not an Island in the Networks of Cyber Protection
Everyone wants their choice of technology and with choice sometimes comes disparate systems. We integrate it all together. You can get that choice, that best of breed, the right technology for the job while at the same time making that experience amazing for the end user, for your customers to be able to access your systems and for your employees.
Identity Cloud is For All Sizes of Businesses
The prospects for growth are tremendous, both in the US and internationally. This is a worldwide movement and in a lot of ways, we are just scratching the surface.
We help companies adapt to the cloud and we help them build better customer websites and mobile apps. These are being done by companies of all sizes. Whether you are a global 2000 or an SMB we can help them all with this unique cloud platform that can reach to the largest companies in the world down to the smallest businesses as well.
The release by Oracle of its AI-powered Autonomous Database Cloud earlier this year and just adding Transactional Processing to its abilities last week is huge for Oracle and its customers who need this cutting edge technology. Oracle considers the Autonomous Cloud a generational release because it literally is the first database in the world that can build itself and update itself without human help.
Oracle Autonomous Database Is a Generational Release
Probably our most important generational database release is the Autonomous Database. This is where the database is integrated with AI and machine learning that really just self-patches and self-tunes. It actually creates a position where your security issues go down, you get higher uptime, and you pay less money. We really never in our history had a database release that had as many positive business outcomes as opposed to just technology.
This is a place where you get better performance, more uptime and you will eliminate tons of labor. Most of our customers, for example, I know this has become a bigger issue with C-Suites now where the amount of time it actually takes to patch software can be months for most of our customers.
This release of the Autonomous Database literally eliminates that need to patch. This is a generational release for us as we bring it to market.
Oracle BYOL Explained
Let me explain BYOL (Bring Your Own License). That is simply where you can buy a license and you can use it on-premise or in the cloud, so it’s basically a currency that you can move across platforms. We’re one of the very few companies that allow you to do that, so we believe it’s an advantage for our customers and what they want and that’s why we utilize that strategy.
Second, I think you need to divide up what’s happening in the applications market versus what’s happening in the infrastructure and platform market. In the applications market, there’s an opportunity now for most companies to modernize all of their systems.
ERP is Moving to the Cloud
Let’s start with the back office systems, the biggest category of back-office applications is called ERP. ERP is basically companies financial supply chain manufacturing systems, etc.
All of those are really going to get replaced over the next several years as companies move to the cloud where there are much more innovation and much more work done by somebody else as opposed to by the customer. We’re in the very early innings of that market.
Oracles Technology is a Competitor Differentiator
We have a significant lead technology wise in ERP and we went through a ton of customer wins in the quarter. That market is going to over the next several years be very exciting. The technology infrastructure market, that’s as you move further up the stack, meaning from compute and storage to database to other tools and systems, Oracle gets more differentiated from competition the further you move up the stack.
Just replacing somebody’s computer with somebody’s infrastructure, while that’s interesting, the more technology you have and the more IP differentiates Oracle. Oracle has always been differentiated by doing the hardest jobs the best, by investing in R&D and investing in innovation.
Oracle Autonomous Database for Transactional Processing Announced
Larry Ellison, Oracle Co-Founder, CTO, and Executive Chairman, made the announcement:
We’re announcing the immediate availability of the Oracle Autonomous Database transactional processing. Now the machine learning based technology not only can optimize itself for queries for database warehouses and Data Marts, but it also optimizes itself for transactions.
It can run batch programs, reporting, Internet of Things, simple transactions, complex transactions, and mixed workloads. Between these two systems, the system that is optimized for data warehousing and the system that’s optimized for transaction processing, the Oracle Autonomous Database now handles all of your workloads. All of them.
Larry Ellison also recently gave his take on the Autonomous Database Cloud:
The cool thing about the Autonomous Database Cloud is because it is autonomous the database is fully automated. Human Beings don’t create the database, the database creates itself. Human Beings don’t tune the database, the database tunes itself.
Oracle announced that it has acquired StackEngine. It didn’t say much about it other than that StackEngine will become part of Oracle Public Cloud. Here’s the full announcement:
On December 18, 2015 Oracle signed and closed an agreement to acquire StackEngine. All StackEngine employees will be joining Oracle as part of Oracle Public Cloud.
StackEngine didn’t say much beyond that either, simply pointing its own site visitors to that announcement for additional information.
Oracle did announce plans to build a “cutting-edge” cloud campus in Austin. This is part of its global hiring initiative to expand its cloud and attract millennial talent.
The company said it will purchase housing for employees to live affordably and conveniently near the campus.
“Austin was a natural choice for Oracle to invest and grow,” said Scott Armour, Senior Vice President, Oracle Direct. “We already have a high-performing employee base in the region, and the surrounding technology community is teeming with creative and innovative thinkers. Our state-of-the-art campus will be designed to inspire, support and attract top talent – with a special focus on the needs of millennials.”
“What Oracle is doing in Austin reinforces what I’m talking about when I say that great cities do big things, especially in the technology sector,” said Austin Mayor Steve Adler. “With this significant investment, Oracle demonstrates that it believes in Austin and its future, and it’s serious about creating fantastic job opportunities in our community. I look forward to working with major employers like Oracle to tackle our biggest challenges, including Mobility and Affordability.”
“We’re positioning the State of Texas to become a home for innovation and technology,” said Texas Governor Greg Abbott. “Thanks to our skilled workforce, combined with our low-tax and low-regulation environment, one of the largest tech companies in the world has chosen to expand in Austin. As Governor, I will continue to pursue policies that invite the expansion and relocation of tech companies to Texas.”
The 560,000-square-foot complex and parking development will be constructed on the waterfront of Austin’s Lady Bird Lake.
Yahoo is pretty serious about trying to get users to choose its search engine as their default experience. Since last fall, we’ve seen the company try a variety of strategies. Now, they’re even trying to get people to switch to Yahoo when they…install Java updates.
That’s the word form The Wall Street Journal, which reports that the company announced a partnership with Oracle that will see users (starting this month) who install or update Oracle’s Java software getting prompted to make Yahoo the default search for their web browser. This is a big deal considering that Java is the most popular programming language and Java software is reportedly installed on 89% of desktop computers.
The Journal shares a screenshot of what users will see, which is a dialog box prompting them to “Get the best of the web with Yahoo” with a checkbox to “Set Yahoo as your homepage and default search engine on Chrome and Internet Explorer, plus get Yahoo as your new tab page on Chrome.”
It continues: “By clicking “Next” and accepting Yahoo Search offerings, your use is subject to the Yahoo Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy. De-selecting the checkbox above declines these optional search offers and proceeds with the rest of the install process.”
So you’ll even have to uncheck the pre-checked box to avoid having Yahoo take over your browser.
A Yahoo spokesperson told the publication, “We have definitely made sure that our onboarding process is one that is highly transparent and gives users choice.”
This is only the latest in a series of movies Yahoo has made to try and increase its users through the changing of their default browser search experiences. As you probably know, Yahoo became the default experience in Firefox in the U.S. through a deal with Mozilla.
Since then, it has displayed a link at the top of its homepage telling visitors to “Upgrade to the new Firefox” if they’re using another browser such as Chrome.
We recently found that they were emailing users to tell them to “stay secure & protected across the web” by downloading Firefox. These emails said nothing of search, and were all about how Firefox is “loaded with features that protect your personal information and keep you safe online.”
These were sent by Yahoo. Not Mozilla.
Google has responded to some of Yahoo tactics by also trying to convince Firefox users to switch back. I’d imagine that as Yahoo continues its aggressiveness, Google will likely ramp up its own. This is an interesting battle to watch for sure.
Database load balancing software provider ScaleArt announced support for automatic cache invalidation, which it calls the world’s first ACID-compliant caching mechanism for dynamic data.
According to the company, the feature increases website and app performance by making it safe to cache data that frequently changes. This goes for things like shopping cart and user profile information for ecommerce apps.
The software tracks data changes to invalidate a cache entry so outdated data isn’t served. The company says it also provides the ability to handle more workload, reducing page download speeds and increasing site performance while protecting data.
“ScaleArc’s auto cache invalidation capability was recently put to the test through an extensive evaluation program conducted by a leading eCommerce company,” said ScaleArc. “The company tested the feature across two query sizes, measuring the query-per-second (QPS) rate and response time both with and without ScaleArc’s database load balancing software. Throughout the testing, the company observed that response time with ScaleArc’s software increased 6x to 12x, depending on the query response size.”
“For any company conducting business online, poor website or application performance can result in users failing to complete a transaction or abandoning the eCommerce site all together,” added CEO Justin Barney. “With ScaleArc’s database load balancing software and automatic cache invalidation, companies can now cache data that was previously believed to be too risky to cache. By now making this data safe to cache, ScaleArc can bolster business for companies with dynamic data, by reducing their page download times and increasing their overall site availability.”
In addition to shopping cart data and user profile data, ScaleArc says Financial data is a predominant use case for auto cache invalidation.
The load balancing software is available for SQL Server, MySQL, and Oracle. More here.
Oracle announced that it’s acquiring consumer data collection company Datalogix, which currently aggregates and provides data for over $2 trillion of consumer spending from 1,500 data partners. This data is used to provide ad targeting.
Datalogix is already in use by 82 of the top 100 advertisers in the U.S. as well as 7 of the top 8 digital media publishers, including Facebook and Twitter.
Oracle says the addition of Datalogix’s solutions will help it provide marketers and publishers with the “richest understanding of consumers across both digital and traditional channels based on what they do, what they say, and what they buy,” while also enabling brands to personalize and measure customer interactions.
“The addition of Datalogix to the Oracle Data Cloud will provide data-driven marketers the most valuable targeting and measurement solution available,” said Omar Tawakol, Group Vice President and General Manager of Oracle Data Cloud. “Oracle will now deliver comprehensive consumer profiles based on connected identities that will power personalization across digital, mobile, offline and TV.”
“Datalogix’s mission is to help the leading consumer marketers connect digital media to the offline world, where over 93% of consumer spending occurs,” added Datalogix CEO Eric Roza. “We are thrilled to join Oracle and extend the value Oracle Data Cloud brings to marketers and publishers.”
Oracles says the deal represents the further extension of its Public Cloud strategy to combine IaaS, PaaS, SaaS and Data as a Service on a common cloud.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the price is estimated to be in the “high hundreds of millions”.
