Highlights from Oracle OpenWorld 2019 – Larry Ellison’s Key-Notes

This article gives some brief and key insights in Larry Ellison’s keynote presentation on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure at Oracle OpenWorld 2019.

Note the new mission statement for Oracle:

Our mission is to help people see data in new ways, discover insights, unlock endless possibilities.

Autonomous was the key word of the conference. Not just Autonomous Database, but also Autonomous OS (Linux) and ultimately Autonomous Cloud. Autonomous refers to elimination of human labor (configuration and management) by leveraging Machine Learning and automating tasks that are currently manual. This reduces costs (the costs of human assets by far outweighs the cost of physical resources). And it reduces risk by eliminating human error and (human) data theft. And it ensures that activities are performed faster and without missing a system when patching.

The (Oracle) Gen2 Cloud aka Oracle Cloud Infrastructure removes human labor and therefore human error and potential data loss.

Larry kept pounding on AWS – positioning Oracle as the modern cloud provider (gen 2) as well as the true Enterprise level technology and service provider.

Larry also positioned the Oracle Database as the single converged database the only one you need [instead of five different database for different workloads and different types of data]; Oracle Database does relational as well as JSON and XML and Graph; it runs OLTP and OLAP and Machine Learning/Advanced Analytics; it does columnar, row level, in memory; it stores blockchain transactions (this was new to me). Evolving and autonomizing one database is far less work than trying to do so for five different database services [as AWS has to do].

Larry suggests that because a smart phone is a converged machine (telephone, email device, music player, camera, …), your database better be a converged system as well.

Larry claims again: “you got to be willing to pay less” – that Oracle Autonomous Database is “way cheaper and way safer” than any of the Amazon databases. Part of the reason is the reduction of human administration effort. Other aspects: auto-scale (pay for actual usage by the hour, dynamic scaling without downtime) and faster processing. “We’ll guarantee your Amazon bill will go in half”

Autonomous Database can start in fairly small configuration:

Announcing: Oracle Data Safe

– see: https://www.oracle.com/database/technologies/security/data-safe.html

Data Safe is a unified control center for your Oracle Databases which helps you understand the sensitivity of your data, evaluate risks to data, mask sensitive data, implement and monitor security controls, assess user security, monitor user activity, and address data security compliance requirements. Whether you’re using Oracle Autonomous Database or Oracle Database Cloud Service (Exadata, Virtual Machine, or Bare Metal), Data Safe delivers essential data security capabilities as a service on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure – at no extra cost.

Announcing: Autonomous Linux –

(see: https://www.oracle.com/cloud/compute/autonomous-linux.html)

the no downtime auto fix OS, based to a large degree on the KSplice technology. Note: Oracle started in the Linux business in 1998 and started selling Enterprise Linux in 2006.

Announcing Exadata X8M

Exadata X8M – M for Memory (or really Persistent Memory, a new Intel feature) Super low latency data access, also RoCE (even faster than Infiniband)

Comparing Exadata X8M to All Flash memory configurations on AWS and Azure:

Announcing OCI Next Generation Storage Platform

Announcing: Building the relationship with Microsoft

Oracle and Microsoft are working closely together. Offering direct and fast connections (high speed link) between Azure and OCI data centers and services. And Oracle offering Microsoft products on their OCI cloud – even the Microsoft SQL Server database. Keep your enemies closer still? Or really good friends? For example: Microsoft Analytics on Oracle Autonomous Database

SQL Server on OCI (later also Windows Server)

intertwined data centers (North East US – Virginia, London, Asia and Europe to follow)

“Microsoft have a lot of good technology” says Larry. He really did.

Data Centers – Global Footprint – expanding from 16 regions to 25 late 2020

Current data centers:

End of 2020, the data centers will be distributed as follows (also note the OCI-Azure interconnects):

New User Experience Design : Redwood UX

Redwood – New User Experience Design – that shows up everywhere. A rebranded Oracle and a new UX design. And a new mission statement written by founder Larry Ellison: “Our mission is to help people see data in new ways, discover insights, unlock endless possibilities.”

The design has less of the ‘agressive’ red, a friendlier font in the titles of powerpoint slides and new colors, new shapes, new interaction flows. This design has influenced the UI of Oracle Cloud, the corporate website and it will influence the UX of all Oracle Applications (SaaS and on premises). Read for example this article.

The folding UI:

Nice visualization: show all my connections in the enterprise in the org chart as well as on a geographic map

Marketplace Paid Listings

Pay for third party applications (SaaaS) offerings using Oracle Cloud Universal Credits – read this. Simply put: you consume an ISVs service running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and payment is handled by Oracle on behalf of that 3rd party. Convenient for the customer  (single bundle of cloud credits) and especially for the 3rd party (leverage Oracle Cloud’s metering and billing process and mechanism).

The Oracle Cloud Marketplace provides a single platform where customers can discover, evaluate, and launch a rich ecosystem of click-to-deploy images and end-to-end solution stacks provided by Oracle and independent software vendor (ISV) partners.
The latest enhancement to the Oracle Cloud Marketplace: the ability to bill on behalf of partners through the Marketplace. With an Oracle Cloud Marketplace “paid listing” capability, customers can now consume the ISV solutions of their choice and receive a single, consolidated bill for these solutions and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services.

VM Ware – lift and shift (in tact) to Oracle Cloud – where Ravello has taken us?

One More Announcement: Oracle Cloud [forever] Free Tier

A request we Groundbreaker ambassadors have been making for many years now: provide a free tier in Oracle Cloud. Minimum set of resources, limited compute and memory and storage that is fine. But something that does not expire after 30 days. Something that allows developers to work on a project for a prolonged period of time and to actually run simple applications. And now, finally, it has been announced. And better than that: it has been delivered. I just got my free tier Autonomous Data Warehouse Cloud up and running in about 10 minutes.

Larry Ellison stated: “We want to get developers from all over the world – to be able to try out and prototype their ideas. Students, enterprise employees and everyone else. It is free – for an unlimited time.”

Always free – it seems a promise (see: https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/ and for some details: https://blogs.oracle.com/oracle-database/freedom-to-build-announcing-oracle-cloud-free-tier-with-new-always-free-services-and-always-free-oracle-autonomous-database ; read the Free Tier FAQ). The free tier includes database as well as Compute VMs, ample Storage, networking and monitoring facilities:

Specifications include:

• 2 Autonomous Databases (Autonomous Data Warehouse or Autonomous Transaction Processing), each with 1 OCPU and 20 GB storage
• 2 Compute VMs, each with 1/8 OCPU and 1 GB memory
• 2 Block Volumes, 100 GB total, with up to 5 free backups
• 10 GB Object Storage, 10 GB Archive Storage, and 50,000/month API requests
• 1 Load Balancer, 10 Mbps bandwidth
• 10 TB/month Outbound Data Transfer
• 500 million ingestion Datapoints and 1 billion Datapoints for Monitoring Service
• 1 million Notification delivery options per month and 1000 emails per month

Not specifically part of the Free Tier – but quite free as well are the first 2 million Function calls on Oracle [serverless] Functions: see https://www.oracle.com/cloud/cloud-native/functions/ 

Always Free includes Oracle Autonomous Database – running on Exadata

Quick comparison to AWS:

Resources

On Demand Videos from Oracle Open World 2019: https://www.oracle.com/openworld/on-demand.html