Oracle (ORCL) has expanded its hybrid cloud product, extending managed cloud services directly into customers' on-premises data centers.
Oracle Cloud at Customer now offers software-as-a-service (Saas) such as ERP and CRM, as well as the full suite of Oracle platform-as-a-service (PaaS) categories including database, application development, big data, application and data integration, and identity management.
Previously, the hybrid product offered only infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and limited PaaS capabilities.
On-Premise Cloud?
Launched in 2016, Cloud at Customer was created for companies that want the benefits of cloud but can’t or won’t move data and apps to the public cloud for legal or compliance reasons.
The service is subscription-based, with customers picking and choosing among infrastructure, software and platform services they need or want. Oracle manages the hardware, software and networking equipment on premises.
“Oracle Cloud at Customer is a direct response to the remaining barriers to cloud adoption,” President of Product Development Thomas Kurian said in a statement. “Customers gain all the benefits of Oracle’s robust cloud offerings, in their own data centers, all managed and supported by Oracle.”
Oracle says the hybrid offering has grown substantially in its first year, with customers including AT&T and Bank of America. However, this type of approach to hybrid cloud is unusual, differing from what most competitors offer.
Oracle also has a lot of catching up to do in the cloud department, lagging far behind leaders like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Google and even IBM in cloud infrastructure sales. In the last quarter of 2016, Oracle claimed just 1.7 percent of global cloud infrastructure market share.
New Services and Technologies
Oracle says the expansion is a result of overwhelming customer demand for SaaS and PaaS services in a managed, subscription-based model directly in their data centers.
The new services take advantage of recent enhancements to the Cloud at Customer platform, including faster CPUs, NVMe-based flash storage and all-flash block storage, the company said.
Also newly available to customers is the Oracle Big Data Cloud Machine, which offers a range of Hadoop, Spark and analytics tools within a customer’s own data center.
Services offered by Cloud at Customer now include infrastructure, data management, big data and analytics, application development, enterprise integration, security and SaaS.
SaaS offerings include Oracle ERP Cloud, Oracle CX Cloud, Oracle HCM Cloud, and Oracle Supply Chain Management Cloud.
