Tagged with Larry Ellison

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

imageThis 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.

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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].

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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.

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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”

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Autonomous Database can start in fairly small configuration:

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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.

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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.

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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)

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

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Announcing OCI Next Generation Storage Platform

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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

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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:

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

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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.

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The folding UI:

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

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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.

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

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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.”

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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

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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

imageQuick comparison to AWS:

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Resources

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

Oracle OpenWorld 2015: Finally a real Vision and Mission. A pleasant surprise

For me the 2015 Oracle OpenWorld was a pleasant surprise.  The surprise was not the announcement of an additional set of cloud products like the Identity Cloud or the Application Builder Cloud Service. The biggest surprise was the different tone of voice during the conference.

In the past you could summarize Oracle’s message as: We are Bigger and Better in technology, Open Source is bad,  Cloud is important, We (Oracle) Offer a full set of products and you do not have to look at other vendors. All your problems will be solved when you buy Oracle.

There is a change happening in Oracle, and the most important change is not the new products. Is a change in market approach, culture and structure.

Larry finally found his vision and mission

OpenWorld_WelcomeKeynote-2015The change was visible in the Sunday and Tuesday keynote by Oracle’s CTO Larry Ellison. After a long time Oracle finally has a vision. And surprisingly it has nothing to do with technology. The vision steers Oracle in a completely different direction. Oracle needs to transform from a tech company to a services organization. It was definitely an inspiring keynote. The SAAS, PAAS, and IAAS business is taken very serious. I expected a full blown attack on Amazon and Salesforce,  but Larry is seeing them as inspiring example.  The CTO of Oracle seemed to have found his new horizon and he is eager to get there. He really looked like he enjoyed it again.

The full stack offering is not the only choice  anymore

Another change: Oracle is not so rigid anymore on the full stack solution. The “Oracle Only” message is replaced by the message: We need to make it easy for our customers to leave Oracle, and then keep them. Mentioning Amazon and Microsoft Azure as viable alternatives is a very strong message.  IBM  and SAP, the long term competitors of Oracle, are nowhere to be found in the cloud realm. Oracle does not pay attention anymore to these companies. Surprisingly these largest companies in the world do not play a role in the cloud industry.

Oracle supports a wide range of options to run other (non- Oracle) applications in the cloud. The goal is to offer the lowest prices for both acquisition and usage of Cloud products.  Oracle is fully supporting Node.js, Ruby and Docker in the cloud. The collaboration with Bitnami (https://bitnami.com/) opens a wide range of open source product to be available for hosting on the Oracle IaaS. One important message I heard a couple of times: “this solution is good because it is based on open standards / is open source”. This obviously signals a change in direction.

Oracle Cloud is an utilities company

Oracle is becoming an utilities company. It needs to perform and it needs to be always on. Outage is not acceptable. Performance and security is built in the platform. When it is easy for customers of Oracle to leave their platform it becomes very important for Oracle to always delivery optimal service and availability. Same as we expect from water or electricity.

Changes within the Oracle organization

The most important consequence of this change is their internal organization. The aim for Oracle sales is not focused anymore at the one time sale. It is focused on the consumption of their products. To keep their customers satisfied and using their platform. This means constant attention to quality and service. By introducing all these subscription based and metered services Oracle is forced to delivery better customer service. And that is a big change considering their history in this field (anyone who ever filed a service request with Oracle knows what I am talking about).

Security is top priory for Oracle

Until now security was a service with lower priority to Oracle. I am not saying they ignored it, but security did made things a bit more complicated. Customers who bought security did not use it or where unable to configure it correctly. The new strategy is to push down the security in the lowest layers of the stack and to have it always on. “There should not be an off switch for security”.

Focus on cost savings and lower licenses

An interesting approach is to offer the users of the Oracle Cloud a real opportunity to save costs. These costs are divided in license, cost for building the application, cost of maintenance and costs for operations. The past 3 years Oracle has worked at lowering these costs by:

  • Easy user interface. So the user can do his work more efficient
  • Using a lot of automation for operational jobs. For example patching and upgrading is much easier and the initial set up of the cloud instances is working with a lot of default settings.
  • And since you are able to spin up additional compute instances when you need them and scale them down afterwards use you are faced with a reduced number of licenses (you only pay what you use).

Open Source Software

The past few years Oracle had a bit of an ambivalent attitude towards open source software. It was something they got with purchasing of Sun Microsystems. This year a lot of open source products where named and used in the Oracle stack. With the message: it is good because it is Open Source.. Tools like Jenkins, Mesos, Docker and the BitNami stack. (https://bitnami.com/stacks). Even support for running .Net on the Oracle Compute Cloud.

Focus on integration and extending applications

The Fusion Application stack is complete. This took years of development. There was a huge emphasis on extending this stack with your own applications. And with the Application Builder Cloud Service this will become even more easy. Also integrating with other platforms and systems. Of course Oracle will deliver integration with large generic systems like Google and Microsoft365. And developers are able to write their own extensions and sell them via the Oracle Market place. So you can extend your Fusion Application even to non-oracle products.  Until now this was very hard to do.And for Fusion Applications there is also the same message: Our customers do not want to be locked in.. Is must be easy for our customers to leave.. and we have to do our best to keep our customers.

I think it still is going to take a while before the effects of these changes become visible for us normal users. Especially the organizational and cultural changes within the Oracle organization.  But it is for a good purpose. Technology is only a means to achieve a business goal.  We want our customers to achieve their goals. And only by operating in this way Oracle is able to change their market and internal structure. Being able to change the internal Oracle organization is going to be the toughest job of all.

Watch the two keynotes by clicking on the image below.

Sunday Keynote Larry Ellison

Sunday Keynote Larry Ellison

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Secure Cloud Tuesday keynote Larry Ellison

The Secure Cloud Tuesday keynote Larry Ellison