Oracle Cloud Computing

Oracle Cloud Computing Solution 

Not so long ago Larry Ellison referred to Cloud Computing as a “computer attached to a network”. I was thus interested to hear two recent announcements from Oracle related to Cloud Computing.

The first announcement was the certification of a wide variety of Oracle applications for running on Amazon EC2. Applications such as Oracle E-Business suite, Oracle PeopleSoft, Oracle Siebel and Oracle database are available in the form of Amazon machine images (AMI’s). Oracle has worked with Amazon, using virtualization provided by Oracle Virtual Machines (OVM) to provide a set of pre-configured machine images. This will enable customers to have the applications up and running in minutes rather than the standard weeks or months with on-premise software installations. In addition, the cloud benefits of elastic scaling and load balancing can be taken advantage of.

The second Cloud Computing related announcement from Oracle is the Oracle Cloud Computing appliance known as the Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. This is a private cloud solution that offers incredible performance for both Java and non-Java applications. All Exalogic configurations are fully redundant at every level and designed with no single point of failure. Operating system support is Oracle Linux or Solaris running on OVM and Oracles complete middleware suite and applications are available too. The really interesting aspect of Exalogic is not only the incredible performance of this appliance, but that Oracle have implemented the Amazon EC2 API, making its usage consistent with Amazon.

Considering Oracles Cloud Computing strategy, it would seem logical that for smaller clients, they could be guided towards Amazon EC2, whilst for larger organisations, adopting the Exalogic private cloud may make sense with a seamless migration path offered between the two. However, on closer analysis, the power of the Exalogic device is incredible. Larry Ellison stated that the complete railway ticketing system for China runs on one Exalogic appliance and that two devices could power the entire Facebook Web layer. How many customers require such computing power ? Maybe Oracle will begin to offer their own public cloud, and enter into competition with Amazon. I am sure this will all unravel pretty quickly over the next few months. What is not in doubt is that this is an exciting development in the world of Cloud Computing.

If you are interested in learning more about what Cloud Computing can offer your organisation, why not consider enrolling on Learning Tree’s Cloud Computing course, where you will gain the skills necessary to evaluate and apply Cloud Computing effectively.

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