Oracle offers a glimpse behind its cloud

Many innovations were unveiled at the Oracle Open World event on the US west coast, writes KARLIN LILLINGTONin San Francisco

BIG DATA management and analysis, cloud computing and social networking filled the headlines this year at Oracle Open World, a technology event so large that several central San Francisco streets are closed off and filled with marquees to manage its 45,000 attendees.

Though the event last week was marred by a public spat that led Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison to bump rival Salesforce.com chief executive Marc Benioff’s keynote off the schedule, delegates had no shortage of main stage talks by high-profile guests, with Dell’s Michael Dell and Cisco’s John Chambers putting in particularly engaging performances.

Open World kicked off with a single major announcement in a so-so opening keynote by Ellison on Sunday night: the launch of the Exalytics Business Intelligence Machine, a computing device designed to analyse the huge amounts of business data generated by many large organisations.

As the week progressed, more “big data” elements were rolled out, including the Oracle Big Data Appliance, another computing machine which analyses and organises information from the internet, such as data streams from social media, mobiles and websites.

These machines fit into Oracle’s hardware strategy shaped around its acquisition of Sun Microsystems last year for $7.4 billion (€5.4 billion). Joint Oracle presidents Safra Catz and Mark Hurd told analysts last week that Sun hardware was enabling the company to advance its software business, with many of its core software products optimised to run on Sun hardware.

Ellison’s closing keynote on Wednesday brought the biggest announcements: an Oracle cloud, and the Oracle Social Network, a social media environment that integrates with all of Oracle’s long-awaited Fusion Applications. The Fusion suite took six years to engineer and brings together over 100 software applications spanning Oracle’s portfolio of acquisitions – software from JD Edwards, PeopleSoft and Siebel Systems that manage everything from human resources to sales to finances. The applications will all run in the new Oracle Public Cloud, Oracle’s offering into the increasingly crowded cloud arena. “But ours is a little bit different. Our cloud is based on industry standards and supports full interoperability with other clouds”, such as Amazon’s or IBM’s, Ellison said.

Java, a programming language used for developing internet applications, is the “glue” that holds the Oracle cloud together, he said. He also took swipes at Salesforce, repeating a past criticism that its approach of “multi-tenancy” – where numerous companies share a cloud – meant that data from one organisation was “co-mingling” with that of another.

He also said that Salesforce’s cloud wasn’t standards-based (a point refuted earlier in the day by Benioff, who had moved his cancelled keynote to the restaurant of a nearby hotel).

“It’s kind of the ultimate vendor lock-in,” Ellison said, getting in a trademark one-two verbal punch. “You can check in but you can’t check out. I like to think of it as the Roach Motel of clouds.” The Oracle Social Network, announced next in the keynote, also fits into the company’s new cloud strategy and enables users to access features of the Fusion applications to share documents, form working groups and collaborate in other ways.

While the cloud and networking announcements were applauded by the keynote audience and welcomed by analysts, many observers noted that Oracle had lagged its competitors in delivering such features. But the announcements meant the company could now offer a complete package of hardware, software and virtual environment.

Analyst Laura Lederman of William Blair said in a note, “We believe that Oracle’s broad technology footprint is its greatest competitive advantage. The company’s multitude of acquisitions has made it more strategic to IT buyers – many customers are taking an Oracle-first approach.” After the conference, the company indicated that it would now focus on developing its portfolio of offerings rather than continue a major acquisitions shopping expedition spanning a decade that has seen it spend $40 billion on 70 companies.

However, Catz – who dampened speculation Oracle might be in the market for HP – noted that Oracle “will not pay unnecessary taxes” in the US by repatriating any of the foreign-based portion of its $31.9 billion in cash and investments and might instead make some foreign acquisitions.

Catz also said Oracle was hiring “aggressively” and could deliver 20 per cent growth on earnings per share this year.