Amazon has benefitted greatly from its cloud platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and now Oracle is seeking to up the competition with added functionalities for its cloud infrastructure offerings. The new emphasis comes as the technology giant aims to pivot from a seller of software licenses to a business more focused on web-based subscription services that can help retailers program and manage apps and analyze data.
Amazon’s cloud service has been no slouch in helping boost the brand’s value. In Q2 2016, net sales from the cloud service increased 58% over the previous year’s totals, reaching $2.89 billion. Similarly, cloud revenue for Oracle also skyrocketed 59%, to $969 million for its first quarter, which ended Aug. 31.
However, while Oracle Co-Founder and Executive Chairman Larry Ellison declared at the Oracle OpenWorld conference that “Amazon’s lead is over. Amazon’s going to have serious competition going forward,” the cloud computing hopeful still trails behind Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and IBM when it comes to market share.
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As more retailers continue to move their computing operations off-site to cloud services, Oracle is putting itself in catchup mode, with the company needing to spend capital on building more of the data centers that are required to handle customers’ computing processes and storage in the cloud. Oracle also doesn’t have the built-in retail advantage of Amazon, since that brand functions as both a retailer and a service platform to begin with.
At the conference, Oracle unveiled its second generation cloud infrastructure service, which enables third-party developers to run their applications in Oracle data centers. There are 19 new cloud services designed to enhance its offerings, including:
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Container Cloud Service;
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Oracle Identity Cloud Service;
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Oracle Internet of Things Cloud Service;
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Big Data Cloud Services; and
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Oracle Analytics Cloud Services.
“Public cloud deployments of business analytics software are still in relatively early stages of adoption,” said Dan Vesset, Group VP of Analytics and Information Management at IDC in a statement. “However, the market for cloud deployments are expected to grow at a rate five times greater than on-premises and other deployment methods. Oracle Analytics Cloud embraces the emerging hybrid data management and analytics architecture, delivers self-service data access and analysis, and will embed cognitive/AI functionality. These capabilities make the company well positioned to take advantage of this market opportunity.”
