Oracle Makes A Case As Cloud Computing Provider

Sometimes it’s good to be late. That’s the argument we’ve heard from quite a few technology companies that are tardy to a particular market. They claim that their “lateness” isn’t really a detriment, but actually a positive attribute to their offering.

That’s certainly the case that Oracle is making when it comes to its cloud computing product, Oracle Cloud, which ties together Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or OCI, with their various cloud, database and application platforms. Right now, Oracle is clearly battling it out for number four with IBM and SAP, well behind Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, regardless of which market research data provider you choose to believe. Of course, with the group creating OCI primarily based in Seattle, it certainly doesn’t hurt (nor is it terribly surprising) that 90-95% of them are alumni from the Amazon AWS or the Microsoft Azure cloud computing group, according to people who are in the Oracle cloud product development group. As a result, several said that they can learn from the missteps of these companies and develop a more efficient solution.

Even with this fourth-place position, however, Oracle clearly sees an opportunity to differentiate from the others, based on its core database IP and a focus on high-performance applications. As was pointed out yesterday on the first day of Oracle’s OpenWorld event in San Francisco, there are quite a few companies that are interested in migrating traditional Oracle-based, database-focused products onto the cloud. So far, the percentage of traditional Oracle-focused companies that have actually done this seems to be pretty small – perhaps in the high single digits as a percentage – but it’s clear that much of the hesitation is due to the more conservative approach to technology adoption that many Oracle customers have. In other words, they may be slow, but that’s really just a reflection of where the real market is. Despite what you may read in the common tech press, the truth is many companies are much slower at adopting these new technologies than the hype would have you believe, especially in the case of cloud or even AI adoption. – Seeking Alpha