You probably have been hearing A LOT about Oracle Cloud over the past few years. From your Oracle sales representatives reaching out to tell you about the latest cloud offering to everything in the Oracle news - which only talks about Cloud!
This blog is going to break down Oracle’s cloud offering in a very simple way so that when you get calls from Oracle trying to sell you their latest offering, you can make sure it’s actually a cloud offering you would consider vs. the cloud offering that particular sales representative is selling.
Oracle has broken their Cloud offering into 3 distinct areas:
SaaS – Software as a Service
PaaS - Platform as a Service
IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service
SaaS - is the Software as a Service part of Oracle’s Cloud offering. This is basically the rewriting of all of Oracle’s applications: ERP, EPM, HCM, CX, SCM, and Analytics. This type of SaaS offering is hosted on Oracle’s cloud. They completely house the backend, therefore your company never touches the database or infrastructure or anything having to do with the backend systems. This is a dream come true for some LOB owners who may be tired of dealing with IT! Typically, this offering is licensed by end user, and you don’t have to worry about any database/middleware licensing costs or any infrastructure costs. This is a great option for companies that want to remove any backend management and/or end users who don’t want to manage things on their own. The downside of this option is that it is a completely NEW application. Therefore, if you are a current E-Business Suite Financials user, you will have to get your users on board for a completely new application with a newer (more modern) interface, Oracle Financials Cloud.
PaaS – Platform as a Service encompasses Oracle’s Database as a Service, Java as a Service, Security as a Service, Integration as a Service, and Analytics as a Service offerings. The advantage to this cloud offering is that Oracle is still managing the backend infrastructure and a lot of the administration for these different services. In the example of Database as a Service, Oracle will handle things like backups, patching, creating new databases, taking databases down. You will still need some DBA and IT administration staff to monitor your PaaS stack, but the work should be less than current state (them doing everything) and they can focus on more value added activities (like working closely with your Development teams and tuning query performance). In this case, Oracle hosts your Database or Application server, so you don’t have to manage the infrastructure. Another advantage some customers are able to realize with PaaS is a reduction of Oracle licensing. Many of the database options are included in this offering, therefore you don’t have to buy things piecemeal as you do when buying licenses for an on-premises deployment. However, as always, a thorough financial analysis would need to take place to determine which method provides more cost savings.
IaaS – IaaS is short for Infrastructure as a Service. This offering directly competes with Amazon Web Service’s core offerings. Oracle can provide, secure networking, compute (dedicated servers and virtual machines), as well as storage for any application in your environment. The Oracle IaaS Cloud also has some features unique among major Cloud providers including Bare Metal Instances and servers running SPARC CPUs. This makes it much easier for longtime Oracle (and former Sun Microsystems) customers running SPARC-based servers to move to the cloud. With Oracle’s IaaS offering you get the advantages of someone else managing your hardware, the ability to scale your footprint up or down as needed (i.e bursts of capacity as needed) and you pay only for what you need. However, while you get maximum flexibility with IaaS you still need your IT staff to manage many aspects of the operating environment, since with IaaS you get the hardware, but not any management services.
At Olitech, we help our clients analyze which cloud offerings would suite their requirements the best, whether it’s Oracle cloud offerings or other cloud offerings in the marketplace. We perform a thorough financial and technical analysis to determine which strategy is best for our clients, from a financial, technical, and management perspective. Please contact us today if you are considering a move to Cloud, we are here to share our expertise and help you build a solid business case!
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By Melissa Cortale & Robert Scott Boucher
Melissa Cortale is founder and President of Olitech Solutions. Melissa is an Oracle licensing expert and a frequent speaker at industry conferences and trade shows. Melissa has shared her expertise at multiple SAM conferences and has has taught IBSMA’s Practitioner’s Certificate in Oracle License Management (PCOLM) course across the US and abroad.
Robert Scott Boucher is a Senior Solutions Architect at Olitech Solutions. Scott has been delivering value through information technology for over 20 years and helping organizations architect, build, operate, and optimize their cloud, hybrid, and on-premises Oracle systems. His experience includes a successful track record in large financial services, technology, and government organizations including ACI Worldwide, ICAP, IBM Global Services and JPMorgan Chase.