AWS is by no means the only player in the cloud-computing
platform space - there are other major technology companies which
play in the same space, offering high-quality cloud services of
their own.
According to Weinberger however, Oracle’s focus is on
converting its existing customers to its cloud products, as
opposed to going after new markets, placing self-imposed
limits on its growth in this area.
As a company which still derives a large percentage of its
revenue from its hardware business, IBM has needed to
adapt to the industry’s gradual conversion to cloudbased computing.
It has invested heavily in recent times in its IBM Bluemix
and IBM Watson products which make it easy for developers to build apps in the cloud, and has spent more than $7
billion to acquire cloud technologies and companies over
the last seven or eight years.
Its acquisition of SoftLayer in 2013 formed the basis of its
expansion into cloud services, and as one of the world’s
biggest companies, it does not lack the scale or resources
to become a serious player in the industry.
As ever, time will tell as to how its recent focus on cloud investment will pay off, but the signs have been encouraging
as IBM has begun to record good growth figures in
this arena.
However, market intelligence indicates that Oracle has
assigned a team to build a completely new cloud offering to
appeal to its largest customers.
Weinberger states that the initiative started in early 2015,
and is being scheduled to enter private beta late next year
with select customers. It’s going to be targeted at banks,
hospitals, and other customers with stringent security and
compliance needs, rather than small,
independent developers.
Apparently it will be billed as being way more reliable and
higher performance than Amazon Web Services, while still
meeting security needs. While Amazon is focused more on
developers and startups, Oracle’s new cloud will comply
with the way that big businesses already build
their applications.
This is all still speculation however. What isn’t speculation,
is that prior investment by Oracle in this area has already
given them a formidable range of quality products and
services to offer customers.
Oracle is said to have invested nearly seven years and billions of dollars in engineering and strategic acquisitions to
provide its customers with the world’s most comprehensive
portfolio of enterprise-grade cloud services.
Sources:
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-amazon-is-so-hard-to-topple-in-the-cloud-and-where-everybody-else-falls-2015-10
http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-has-special-team-working-on-new-public-cloud-2015-10
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