Oracle – finally into “front” of the Cloud – @Open World

Oracle finally gets into the game of Cloud @OpenWorld, atleast in the “FRONT” of it, as its been driving most of the backend/database for most SaaS applications, including that of Salesforce.

After watching from the sidelines, Larry Ellison gets into adopting the Cloud. After years of first questioning SaaS models feasibility, then accepting (subtly) and now planning to announce at the coming Open World next week.

Oracle will be releasing a number of Cloud offerings in this event ranging from availability of Oracle Fusion on the Cloud to development tools to adopt its cloud services.

While Day One of Oracle World is scheduled to be “Traditional Enterprise”, day 2 and 3 will be focused on Cloud Computing and Oracle’s case on it.

So lets see what all will be talked about “Cloud Services”

Thomas Kurian, EVP of Product Development will be presenting Oracle Cloud Services and Cloud Java Services and its ERP stack of Oracle Fusion CRM, Human Capital management and others.

Joe Tucci, Chairman and CEO of EMC as reviews how Cloud is transforming IT and will focus on Big Data. This area is very interesting.  Lately, I have been attending a few conferences in Big Data and usually it goes like “Big Data – is a hype or reality”, who is using it? EMC is setting up a story of “we are ready” with Big Data, the question is if the industry generally is?

One good thing that Big Data has brought in, is that its made Databases “Sexy” again. What’s missing is tools and technology to adopt and drive it. Perhaps, Oracle should be taking a lead on it.

Larry Ellison then speaks about The Oracle Cloud: Where Social Is Built on – perhaps describing their recent acquisition on SelectMinders. Would be interesting to see Oracle, a traditional software provider foray into consumer and social world.

John Fowler, EVP Oracle will be presenting Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Engineered Systems: Fast, Reliable, Virtualized – an effort from Oracle to sell their hardware + software story.

Cloud story comprises of 4 basic parts – IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, and hardware to run these. Oracle’s offering adds its chapters on Hardware (Sun), IaaS , PaaS (Cloud Java Services), I feel they are missing its boat on SaaS. There are some basic characteristics that make a “Good” SaaS application – multi-tenancy, customer experience around ramp-up and being able to use the best of the breed around it. As I visit Open World and look through it, I will be adding updates to my blog. Stay tuned…