Oracle Open World'08 Key Note - Cloudy Announcements!!

Live blogged from Oracle World

There were quite a few interesting points mentioned in the keynote by
Chuck Rozwat & Charles Philips. Here’s the Cloud specific items of note;.
Chuck Rozwat listed the 3 key strategic directions of how Oracle approaches its
Application Layer/product suite;

Application Unlimited (New functionality, Enhanced functionality with Fusion
middleware & lifetime support)
Fusion Applications (Complete New Experience App)
Oracle Software As a Service (On Premise, On Demand, Hybrid etc)

Another announcement of note was Oracle DB, Fusion Middleware &
Enterprise manager for the Cloud – The first environment is Amazon EC2 – customers can deploy this environment
with no additional license, enabling customers to deploy Oracle solutions on
Amazon EC2 quickly and efficiently. Oracle is delivering a set of free Amazon
Machine Images (AMIs). Using Oracle provided AMIs, new virtual machines can be
provisioned with Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Enterprise Linux.
Robert Shimp, vice president Oracle Global Technology Business Unit said that;

Providing choice is the foundation of Oracle’s strategy to enable customers
to become more productive and lower their IT costs — whether it’s choice of
hardware, operating system, or on demand computing – extending this to the Cloud
environment is a natural evolution. We are pleased to partner with Amazon Web
Services to provide our customers enterprise-class Cloud solutions, using
familiar Oracle software on which their businesses depend.

Oracle is also introducing a secure Cloud-based backup solution. Oracle
Secure Backup Cloud Module, based on Oracle’s premier tape backup management
software, Oracle Secure Backup, enables customers to use the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) as their database backup destination.
Cloud-based backups offer reliability and virtually unlimited capacity,
available on-demand and with no up-front capital expenditure. The Oracle Secure
Backup Cloud Module also enables encrypted data backups to help ensure complete
privacy in the Cloud environment. It’s fully integrated with Oracle Recovery
Manager and Oracle Enterprise Manager, providing users with familiar interfaces
for Cloud-based backups. I also attended a session titled – Oracle On Demand
Overview Session that included;

Juergen Rottler EVP Oracle Customer Services
Marc Schwarz – SVP, Oracle OnDemand
Michael Beck – SVP, Oracle OnDemand

Interestingly OnDemand is a
part of Customer Services business group within US Juergen
Rottler Strategic ContextCorporate Strategy – Complete –
Open – Integrated Customer Service Strategy – Maximize Customer Success (Deep
Expertise, Complete lifecycle, industry leadership & service innovation) On
Demand Strategy – Accelerate time to value, Optimize IT so customers can focus
on their investments. Absolutely mission critical for the long terms success for
Oracle. Marc Schwarz Evolution 10 years in
the on Demand business Oracle On Demand Vision Statement

Create a lights-out model (self manageability, configurable , healing etc)
Continue to innovate
Transform the industry

Subscription and managed applications that
help customers accelerate business results, reduce risks and lower costs.
Current view of the business

4.5 million users
89% current release

Product and Services Portfolio

Sourcing SaaS
Beehive SaaS
PSFT Prof Edition
EBSO Prof Edition
Beehive@Oracle
Hyperion On demand
Agile On Demand
OBIEE/BI
SEBL 8.0 Release
PSFT 9.0 Release
EBS r12 Release

Customers want them to take on more of the IT
department – Clearly want more of the Services revenue (Patching, upgrading etc
– customer model) – @customer on steroids.