Oracle’s Larry Ellison sees Amazon as top cloud computing rival

Oracle chairman Larry Ellison makes no secret of whose customers the world's largest business software firm would be targeting as it continues its aggressive fight for market share in the cloud computing space.

The 72-year-old billionaire used the opening keynote speech of the annual customer event at the Moscone Convention Center in downtown San Francisco this week to announce new products and services, particularly for the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) sector.

"Our number one competitor in this space is Amazon and we plan to go after them aggressively," he said.

Thousands have gathered for the four-day event – with an unusually high security presence for a tech conference – where the cofounder of the world’s largest business software firm made crystal clear where Oracle’s priorities lie.

“We are in the middle of a generational change as computing moves from on-premise to a smaller number of large data centres we call clouds,” Ellison said.

According to the tech veteran, the IT industry was simply catching up with other services already run in this way – such as utilities like water and electricity.

“Computing is a commodity, just like electricity or water,” he said. “Most of us don’t have our own wells so we tap into water systems. That way we can take advantage of the economies of scale enjoyed by having a central water provider. Now we are beginning to get our information technology from central data utility providers.

‘Simple appliance’

“At the end of any complex utility infrastructure there is a simple appliance for its consumption – a faucet or a plug. In data terms, this is the smartphone, tablet or other device.”

Oracle’s acquisition of cloud company NetSuite for $9.3 billion (€8.3 billion) in July this year was the biggest purchase the company has made in over a decade as it moves from a heretofore vocal sceptic of cloud-based technology to one of its key advocates.

Often considered to have entered a little late to the cloud-services game, Ellison dismissed this by pointing to Oracle’s recent performance in the cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) sector.

“We’re now selling more SaaS than anyone else in the world,” he said. “People say it is an overnight success. Perhaps a night on Pluto. We’ve been working in this space for the last 10 years.”

Challenges

However, big challenges remain for all cloud-based data storage providers, according to Ellison. With references to Wikileaks, Edward Snowden and other recent examples of data security breaches, he stressed how important it was that cloud service providers can guarantee secure data migration.

"The result of the next US general election could be determined by one man - Vladimir Putin, " he said.

“How can one individual determine an entire election? By leaking emails. Security may be the single most important issue we face when migrating data from on-premise centres to cloud-based data centres.”

Oracle OpenWorld 2016 runs from September 18th to 22nd 2016 in San Francisco.