Modern businesses often find themselves in the double bind of facing inordinate pressure to innovate but also to tamp down IT expenses. On the surface, the two seem mutually exclusive, but Oracle Co-President Mark Hurd begs to differ. Through the ever-expanding capabilities and capacity of its cloud, Oracle is confident it can help businesses innovate and save money simultaneously.

Presently, with annual revenue of almost $2 billion from cloud subscriptions, Oracle is the second-biggest cloud vendor after SalesForce.com. Hurd is convinced, however, that with his vision for the cloud of the future, Oracle will soon become number one. Here are five ways Hurd and Oracle plan to expand and change the cloud to transform the way enterprises view and access cloud services.

1. Migration of On-Premises Suites to the Cloud

Cloud

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Oracle estimates it can generate another $10 billion in cloud subscription revenue from its applications clientele alone by moving on-premises suites to the cloud. Convincing customers to do so is not exactly a hard sell, as Mark Hurd’s website points out, because the cloud enables businesses to channel precious IT dollars into “higher-value initiatives.” Migrating core on-premises services to the cloud delivers critical information to the sales team in real-time and unifies supply-chain demands, thereby helping businesses get the “right product to the right place at the right time.”

Specifically, Oracle hopes to convince some its thousands of customers with on-premises installations to add cloud modules for procurement, marketing, talent management, and other services. Ideally, some customers will even want full-fledged migrations of their core on-site suites to the cloud to save money and streamline their business.

2. Providing Products for All Layers of the Cloud

Currently, Oracle is the only enterprise-technology company that invests in and offers products for each of the three layers of the cloud: IaaS (infrastructure as a service), SaaS (software as a service), and PaaS (platform as a service). Oracle’s strategy is to attract customers with price-competitive IaaS and then sell them highly differentiated SaaS and PaaS solutions. For instance, Oracle offers more SaaS enterprise applications than any other cloud services provider, and it designs these applications for convenient use on smartphones and tablets. The result will be explosive growth in the company’s cloud.

3. Optimizing Products for the Cloud

Oracle has optimized its new Database 12c for the cloud and added an in-memory option that will likely generate significant interest among cloud companies. When the Database 12c in-memory option is paired with the M6 (32 terabytes of memory), Hurd says that 99.99 percent of all databases can then be stored in main memory with exponentially improved performance. This combination might be especially appealing to large banks and telecommunication businesses that want to build a private cloud.

4. Complex Products Necessitate Cloud Options

Soon, Oracle will release the ninth version of its popular Fusion Applications that help businesses with critical functions like customer relationship management, financials, procurement, and governance and compliance. Although Fusion can be run on-premises, the complexity of doing so has led most customers to go with the cloud option. To date, Oracle has almost eight million subscribers to the Fusion Cloud.

5. Deeper Involvement with ISVs

While vendors of SaaS already commonly use Oracle technology, Oracle wants to add another dimension to its relationship with independent software vendors (ISVs) now that it also offers platform and infrastructure services. Oracle operates 19 data centers globally, and that coverage paired with its multi-layer cloud technology offerings make a full migration to the cloud irresistibly attractive to ISVs.

Now that Oracle can provide one-stop shopping, ISVs will continue to embrace cloud options as a more affordable alternative to buying software licenses and hardware. The cloud option spares ISVs the hassle of dealing with intricate data sovereignty and regulatory issues.

Oracle has already changed the landscape of the enterprise-technology industry indelibly, and its cloud innovations will only deepen its footprint. As products become more complex, more affordable, and better suited for the cloud, more and more companies will come to rely on cloud services as the lifeblood of their business.

PlabanInternetModern businesses often find themselves in the double bind of facing inordinate pressure to innovate but also to tamp down IT expenses. On the surface, the two seem mutually exclusive, but Oracle Co-President Mark Hurd begs to differ. Through the ever-expanding capabilities and capacity of its cloud, Oracle is...Technology News, Gadgets, Tutorial, Freebies