E-Guide GUIDE TO ORACLE’S CLOUD SERVICES AND...

E-Guide

GUIDE TO ORACLE’SCLOUD SERVICES AND STRATEGY

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New services complete Oracle Cloud Platform offering, Ellison says

Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c R5 focuses on the hybrid cloud

IOUG president on Oracle cloud services strategy, big data usage

GUIDE TO ORACLE’S CLOUD SERVICES AND STRATEGY

he addition of more than two dozen cloud computing services will allow users to move everything in their data centers to the Oracle cloud. So, what exactly does

that mean? This e-guide gives an overview of Oracle’s latest cloud announcement, as well as details about how release 5 of Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c adds new features for managing hybrid cloud environments. Additionally, reader will learn about Oracle’s cloud strategy from the IOUG president, as well details around IOUG’s BI and big data analytics initiatives.

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NEW SERVICES COMPLETE ORACLE CLOUD PLATFORM OFFERING, ELLISON SAYS Jessica Sirkin

Oracle last week announced the upcoming release of more than two dozen new cloud computing services as part of its Oracle Cloud Platform, with Larry Ellison, the company’s CTO and executive chairman, claiming that the additions give Oracle a comprehensive cloud offering.

Later this year, Oracle intends to add the last missing piece -- its manufacturing applications suite. At that point, according to Ellison, Oracle will have all the basic services needed to run business operations in the cloud. But he isn’t waiting for that to declare Oracle fully cloud-ready.

“We’re now prepared to call our application suite complete, which means that you can now move everything in your data center to the Oracle cloud,” Ellison said. He wasn’t referring only to shifting Oracle systems into the cloud: “It’s not just Oracle technology. It’s all necessary [IT components] to move all of your technology to the Oracle cloud.”


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The new services, which include a cloud-based version of Oracle’s Exadata database appliance and a pair of services supporting big data applications in the cloud, encompass what Ellison refers to as the three layers of the cloud -- applications, computing platform and supporting technology infrastructure. To that end, they provide a wide range of functionality across IT domains such as networking, programming, data processing, storage and data management. Oracle has gone for a full stack in the cloud, a strategy Ellison and other executives claim sets it apart from cloud rivals like Amazon Web Services and Salesforce.com.

AS ON-PREMISES, SO IN THE CLOUD

Ellison said Oracle’s cloud strategy also includes offering the same tools and technologies in the cloud as it does on-premises. As a result, he added, when a company moves a database into the cloud, the same platform services can cross over with it. In addition, Oracle plans to support all popular programming layers in the cloud, including Java,Node.JS and Ruby. “The tool set you’re already using is the tool set you’ll have in the cloud,” Ellison said.

According to Ellison, the final big gap in Oracle’s cloud offering was a strong set of computing services. The company is looking to remedy that with a new


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Oracle Compute Service suite that it said lets users deploy any application, including third-party and custom ones, on the Oracle Cloud Platform with predictable performance.

The compute suite also adds shareable NFS-based file storage and cloud data transfer services with bulk import capabilities designed to ingest large amounts of data. The data transfer tools can stream data from on-premises to the cloud and vice versa -- a feat that Ellison claimed as being unique to Oracle.

A NEW PLACE TO GO WITH EXADATA

Thomas Kurian, president of Oracle’s product development operations, said as part of the announcement that the Exadata appliance now available in the cloud “is the best infrastructure to run Oracle on.” Kurian added that it will be easy to move data between on-premises Exadata systems and Exadata Service in the cloud. The cloud version will support both Oracle Database 11g and 12c and have the same functionality, performance and availability as the on-premises machine, he said.

Oracle Big Data Cloud Service and Oracle Big Data SQL Cloud Service are the two new big data services. They provide a platform for running applications based on Hadoop clusters, Spark, the Oracle NoSQL database and


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Oracle’s implementation of the R analytics language. In addition, they extend Oracle’s SQL implementation to Hadoop and NoSQL software, allowing for more comprehensive queries across different data stores. For instance, the technology can query a Hadoop system and an on-premises Oracle database simultaneously and express the results in SQL.

Other additions to the Oracle Cloud Platform include an Oracle Mobile Cloud Service designed to make it easier to build applications that work across mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets. It includes a mobile back end as a service (MBaaS) module to help developers rapidly create mobile applications that can be pre-integrated with the MBaaS, which provides security and manages what data is exposed to the mobile applications. Meanwhile, a still-to-be-released Oracle Cloud Application Builder will provide a Web-based module for developing mobile and Web applications -- a tool that Kurian described as being “for business users who want to extend the capabilities of their applications.”

In addition, Oracle Storage Cloud Archive Service provides a “deep cloud” archive for infrequently accessed large-scale data. Oracle Integration Cloud Service is designed to simplify integration between cloud and on-premises databases, making it easier to migrate to the cloud or run a hybrid cloud. And


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Oracle Process Cloud Service provides a zero-code, cloud-based automation platform that enables business users to set up automated workflows and manage business process lifecycles without needing IT help.


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ORACLE ENTERPRISE MANAGER 12C R5 FOCUSES ON THE HYBRID CLOUDJessica Sirkin

This week, Oracle announced a new Release 5 version of Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, its suite of management tools. The most important thing to keep in mind with OEM 12c R5 is its support for hybrid cloud environments, according to Dan Koloski, senior director of product management for Oracle Enterprise Manager. He said new features and improvements related to managing hybrid clouds are the biggest difference between R5 and previous versions.

That means, first and foremost, being able to manage hybrid cloud data like it’s on-premises data with exactly the same experience as working in on-premises systems. “The only way you know it is different,” Koloski said, “is the cloud symbol in the [user interface].” It also means factors like monitoring templates, lifecycle management processes and patching, tuning, configuration and compliance measures applied on-premises can also be applied in the cloud. “All of our on-premises capabilities can be applied out of the box to the cloud,” he said.


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Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c R5 also has several other new cloud features. One allows users to move environments back and forth between on-premises systems and the cloud. That means applications built on-premises can be moved to the cloud and vice versa, using the same three-step wizard. In addition, everything on-premises and in the cloud can be viewed using the same OEM 12c interface and looked at as one continuous whole rather than two pieces.

Another new feature is the Hybrid Cloud Gateway, which brokers the connections between a company’s databases and the Oracle cloud. The gateway allows customers to connect their on-premises OEM installations to Oracle’s cloud platform and encrypt communications back and forth without having to open up their networks and risk man in the middle attacks by hackers.

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The most notable non cloud-related feature in OEM 12c R5 is the addition of snapcloning capabilities to Oracle’s Exadata system optimized for on-premises installations of the database appliance. Oracle’s Snap Clone technology lets database administrators make clone copies of portions of databases for use in functional testing processes, such as quality assurance or user acceptance tests.

But with only one major new feature that isn’t related to managing a hybrid cloud infrastructure, it’s clear that this version of Oracle Enterprise Manager


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12c has a theme. According to Koloski, the hybrid cloud is important to Oracle because its customers are frequently large companies. Typically, they already have on-premises OEM installations and personnel with the expertise to use them. Those companies don’t want to have to retrain employees for the cloud, Koloski said, adding that OEM 12c R5’s hybrid cloud management capabilities will allow “100% reuse of their existing skills.”

Furthermore, Koloski said, one of the reasons why many big companies aren’t yet willing to step into the cloud is a lack of configuration and compliance management functionality. Companies that have large database footprints need to maintain internal standards and meet regulatory compliance requirements across all of their systems, he noted. The goal of Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c R5, he said, is to give such companies access to the cloud in a way that enables them to do so.


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IOUG PRESIDENT ON ORACLE CLOUD SERVICES STRATEGY, BIG DATA USAGEJessica Sirkin

John Matelski is president of the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) and chief innovation and information officer for the government of DeKalb County in Georgia. At Collaborate 15, a conference held jointly in Las Vegas by Oracle’s three primary user groups, SearchOracle caught up with Matelski to get his thoughts on Oracle’s changing priorities, in particular its increased push toward the cloud. Matelski said the growing portfolio of Oracle cloud services is getting the attention of IOUG members, including his own organization.

He also discussed the adoption of business intelligence and big data analytics technologies by the DeKalb government, which oversees Georgia’s third-largest county by population, including the city of Decatur and part of Atlanta. Matelski said he thinks government operations that are willing to be on the leading edge of BI and analytics usage have a good shot at being able to improve services and lower costs. Excerpts from the interview follow.


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ORACLE HAS BEEN GOING THROUGH A LOT OF CHANGES LATELY. WHICH

CHANGE DO YOU THINK WILL HAVE THE BIGGEST IMPACT ON ORACLE USERS?

John Matelski: I would suggest that the biggest impact in terms of changes is their deep dive into cloud. I know in the past Larry [Ellison] might have been giving some mixed messages here, but at this point there is no doubt about the significant investments they’re making in the cloud. I can speak for the IOUG community and say that there is a lot of excitement being generated. That doesn’t mean everyone is out there buying it today. But the promise of being able to be more efficient, be more effective, do things more quickly, is bringing in a lot of interest. It’s going to be exciting to watch the execution. For the most part, Oracle has been very good about executing once they make a commitment, so I don’t have too many doubts as to whether or not they’ll be able to do it.

HOW HAS ORACLE’S FOCUS ON THE CLOUD AFFECTED YOUR IT WORK IN

DEKALB COUNTY?

Matelski: Over the past two years, we’ve endeavored to move more and more of our solutions into the cloud. We’re more focused on private and hybrid cloud offerings -- we’re really not looking at public cloud solutions at this point. But every RFP that we put out on the street, if [vendors] have a cloud option or a


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SaaS option, we’re asking them to bid that. Now, if their best way to provide a solution is still on-premises, that’s OK. We’re still willing to look at that.

It’s just the way the cost of hardware continues to escalate and the way the refresh cycles are getting shorter. In the past, I could get a good five years out of my servers. Now, I’m maybe only getting three years. In a public-sector government environment, there’s never a guarantee that I’ll be able to get the couple hundred thousand or a million [dollars] to do a hardware refresh. It’s better for me to move into the cloud, where the infrastructure components are being managed by the vendor. It enables us to focus more on what our competencies are and not have to worry about the hardware, the platform, the infrastructure.

I’m not going to suggest to you that all public-sector governments are doing that. I think the biggest issue right now that people are concerned about is always security. It’s a very valid concern, but I would suggest -- and I tell everyone I talk to, including the [county’s] Board of Commissioners when I was making these recommendations -- that vendors like Microsoft and Oracle spend more on security in one day than I could hope to get for years to put into our security. So, the reality is that these cloud and software-as-a-service environments are much more secure than I could ever hope to be. That’s not to


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say that I’ve got an insecure environment. It’s just that they do this for a living. What we need to focus on is making sure that our service-level agreements and our contractual agreements are written in such a way to make sure that we’re fully protected.

ARE YOU BUYING INTO THE NEW ORACLE CLOUD SERVICES, THEN?

Matelski: I want to get more clarity on [them]. We’re looking in DeKalb County at enhancing and/or upgrading the customer relationship management portion of our overall Oracle ecosystem. Right now, the cloud offering seems like the direction I probably want to go. What I haven’t seen yet is the cost proposal and then all of the different integrations I might need back into my current solution. But I’m now at the point where I can really take a look and get a better understanding of what is the cloud offering going to give me, and try to get a return on investment or total cost of ownership model created for that.


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HOW IS THE PUBLIC SECTOR HANDLING BIG DATA AND BUSINESS

INTELLIGENCE?

Matelski: The biggest concern from the public-sector standpoint is that once you get the data, in most cases those records become open records. Any data or big data that I might start collecting can become [the subject of ] a potential open records request, so we have to be really, really careful as to how we delve into that.

But DeKalb County is really a progressive, innovative county. My title has moved from chief information officer to chief innovation and information officer, because we really want to focus on innovation. We’re one of the few counties or jurisdictions that are really looking at the value of the Internet of Things or Internet of Everything. We’re partnering with Cisco right now and doing some studies and hoping to do some rollouts of IoT [technologies] that will help us be able to collect data that will then help us get a better understanding of traffic patterns and other constituent-type data. It’s not Big Brother-type data, because that’s always a concern. It’s about how can we aggregate the data to deliver higher-quality services to our citizens and constituents.

We’re getting into BI and analytics fairly aggressively. The first area where we really started focusing is in our public safety realm. We use a lot of data for


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some of our smart policing initiatives so that we can better understand crime trends. There, again, it’s not about John Matelski or Jane Doe. It’s about how, in this particular area, crime has increased. What’s happened? Did we get a movement of some kind? Did something happen at a particular school? We try to look at all of the different data points that are available and then leverage that data to help provide better services to our citizens and constituents. And I would argue that those counties and jurisdictions that are willing to be at the forefront -- I wouldn’t say at the bleeding edge, but maybe the leading edge -- those are the jurisdictions that are going to be able to really provide their citizens and constituents with better services and drive down costs.


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E-Guide GUIDE TO ORACLE’S CLOUD SERVICES AND...

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