Oracle has officially launched its public cloud market, Oracle Cloud, thus entering a segment that has long shunned by the world’s number two software major and the world’s largest database maker.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has introduced suites of cloud services including Oracle Cloud Social Services, a business social platform, Oracle Cloud Platform Services and Oracle Application Services. All these solutions are fully managed, hosted and supported by Oracle.
Ellison said the cloud services are nothing more and nothing less and are “the most comprehensive cloud on planet earth.”
“After nearly seven years of continuous development and innovation, strategic acquisitions and a billion investments we introduce the most comprehensive cloud world,” said Ellison. “Most cloud vendors have only partial solutions. They do not have platforms that are expanding. Oracle is the only vendor that offers a complete suite of modern, social enabled applications, which are available on a standards-based platform.”
Oracle Cloud will include more than 100 applications and the services comprise technologies of Fusion business applications and online programs from Oracle acquired companies Taleo Corp. and RightNow Technologies Inc.
Oracle Exadata and Exalogic
Oracle said businesses don’t get a complete range of business applications and services platform where they are not hindered by the fragmentation of data and business processes, which often occur when using multiple public clouds.
Oracle Exadata and Exalogic eliminate these difficulties and allow customers and partners to have a high-performance, reliable and secure infrastructure at their disposal to run critical business applications. Business users are able to use their applications with easy to configure, expand or monitor capabilities. Developers and administrators on the other hand can also easily develop, deploy, monitor and manage applications.
Oracle Cloud Platform Services
Oracle Cloud Platform Services are built on an accessible, comprehensive and standards-based enterprise infrastructure and enables customers their time to market faster and reduce their costs by quickly manage, build and deploy customized applications.
Oracle Cloud Platform Services provides database services to manage data and build database applications with the Oracle database, Java services for developing, deploying and managing Java applications with Oracle WebLogic and developer services for the joint development of applications.
The web services quickly create web applications using PHP, Ruby and Python. Mobile services enable developers to create cross-platform native and html5 mobile application development for smart phones and tablets. Document services provide project teams to work together and documents sharing through online workspaces and portals. Finally, site services lets developers to develop and maintain visually attractive websites and analytics services for rapid creation and sharing of analytical dashboards and reports via the cloud.
“We think a modern cloud lets you decide when you want to upgrade — not have the cloud vendor tell you when you upgrade to the next version of the software,” Ellison said. “We will let you, within reason, schedule the upgrade.”
Oracle Cloud Application Services
Oracle Cloud Application Services offers customers access to a collection of enterprise applications in the cloud, including business intelligence, social and mobile capabilities. Oracle Cloud Application Services feature easy to install, configure, expandable, and manageable services and include ERP, HCM, talent management, sales, and marketing offerings.
Oracle Cloud Social Services
Oracle Cloud Social Services provides enterprise social platform in the cloud. With these services, businesses can interact with their customers through social media. It enables companies to use social marketing, sales, customer service and listening to customers through social media. The platform offers companies the ability to train their employees to cooperate effectively within the enterprise through a social networking solution.
Oracle Joins the Crowded Cloud Markets
Oracle’s expansion into cloud computing puts the company on a collision course with Salesforce, SAP and Amazon. SAP has been making acquisitions to expand in cloud computing. The company last month acquired Ariba and unveiled several cloud offerings by combining human-resources technologies of SuccessFactors, which the company has acquired last year.
Computer-systems makers such as HP, IBM, and Dell are also beginning to introduce cloud based online processing power and software tools for developers.
With cloud suites offering, Oracle plans to release software for enterprise-resource planning (to compete with Salesforce), supply chain management and accounting.