Oracle recently held their largest annual conference, Oracle OpenWorld 2017 (OOW), where they shared industry trends, Oracle product updates and Cloud-based strategies for growth.
Tens of thousands descended on San Francisco for the 5-day conference, including Olitech’s President, Melissa Cortale. This blog will examine some key highlights from the conference.
All-in on Cloud
Oracle promoted the conference as “dedicated to helping businesses leverage Cloud for their innovation and growth,” and they didn’t disappoint. Every keynote addressed the Oracle Cloud in some capacity, and it is clear Oracle is significantly investing in Cloud solutions (including SaaS, PaaS and IaaS). In addition, promised to make Cloud offerings more cost-competitive to solutions like Amazon and Azure.
Focus on security
IT security and cyber crime has taken center stage of late, in the wake of massive recent hacks. To name a few, the recent Equifax hack put 143 million users’ data at risk, while the 2015 Federal Office of Personnel hack compromised the data (including fingerprints and social security numbers) of 5.6 million federal employees.
As such, security was a top focus of OOW. To defend against sophisticated cyber criminals and even foreign governments, Oracle implored organizations to make data center security their #1 priority. Oracle CTO Larry Ellison gave this fitting analogy: “In aviation we have made preventing crashes a top priority and today they occur rarely. We need to do the same with security.”
The first “autonomous database”
Oracle made a major product announcement, introducing Oracle Database 18c, the world’s first autonomous database cloud. Features of the database include:
Self-driving capabilities
Automated cyber defense, with the ability to detect and remediate attacks in real-time
It automatically provisions, upgrades and tunes itself
Automated security patching, with no downtime
With less human interaction, there will be less human error and fewer personnel resources needed. Oracle projects that the database will have less than 30 minutes of downtime per year, with 99.95% guaranteed uptime.
The new database will be available for Datawarehousing workloads in December 2017, and for OLTP in June 2018.
Licensing and pricing updates
Oracle also introduced a few licensing and pricing updates as it relates to their Cloud offerings, to help customers get the most from their existing Oracle investment.
Bring Your Own License (BYOL): Currently, Oracle customers can bring on-premises licenses to Oracle IaaS. BYOL expands that offering, allowing clients to use existing licensing for Oracle PaaS (including Oracle Database, Oracle Middleware, Oracle Analytics and more).
Universal Cloud Credits: According to Oracle’s press release, Universal Cloud Credits enable customers to “have one simple contract that provides unlimited access to all current and future Oracle PaaS and IaaS services, spanning Oracle Cloud and Oracle Cloud at Customer.”
These updates should make licensing more flexible and cost-effective for organizations, adding value to existing contracts.
At Olitech, we are the Oracle experts, here to help Oracle customers with technical and licensing solutions. If you want to learn more about the OOW announcements, generally need support with your Oracle environments, or want to learn how to maximize your licensing investments in Oracle, contact us today.
----
By Melissa Cortale
Founder & President at Olitech Solutions
Melissa Cortale is an Oracle licensing expert and a frequent speaker at industry conferences and trade shows. Most recently at IBSMA’s June SAM Summit she shared her expertise in breakout sessions including: Making sense of Oracle's most complex licensing terms and Managing Oracle for an Enterprise. In addition, Melissa has taught IBSMA’s Practitioner’s Certificate in Oracle License Management (PCOLM) course across the US and abroad.