Cloud Computing with the sole aim of allowing users to take benefits from existing technologies, without the need for deep knowledge about or expertise with each one of them, has continued to gather momentum.
New report shows that public cloud market overall will reach $207 billion in 2016 from 2012 $109 billion and $91 billion in 2011, with leading software companies like Oracle making commitments towards it actualization.
Speaking during Cloud Computing Consumer Summit in Lagos recently, Gamal Badr, Cloud Computing Solution Specialist at Oracle, said that Cloud Computing is the result of evolution and adoption of existing technologies and paradigms hence the software company is offering customers the same Oracle cloud software stack bedded on a singular hardware platform, assembled from Oracle’s engineered appliances.
IT expert who spoke to Nigeria CommunicationsWeek at the event confirmed that Oracle is offering solutions and infrastructure different from other companies like Amazon Web Services, Terremark, and Rackspace. In other words, Oracle cloud was “based on industry standardization.”
Badr during his presentation on ‘Architecting Your Cloud: A Blueprint for Cloud Builders’ affirmed that Oracle’s cloud primarily run in Java, a language based on an international standard.
“The peculiarity of Oracle’s cloud is that it runs any applications written in Java, whether those apps are custom enterprise versions or Oracle Fusion apps. Oracle’s Siebel, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and E-Business Suite applications have been rewritten in Java to form the new Fusion line”.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek checks show that Oracle also uses Web service standards, such as SOAP, REST, and XML, to create its public interfaces to its cloud services. Also, virtual appliances in the Oracle cloud will run under Oracle VM 3.0, which adheres to the open source codebase for Xen.
Identifying consolidation and standardization as the first steps to private cloud, Badr added that users can leverage on the provisions made in its ‘infrastructure as a service’ anchored on Oracle’s self-service, Automated IaaS.
These are tied to virtualization, self service portal, create rich service catalog based on pre-installed (by Oracle) or self created images, among other values.
Although he agreed that apprehensions about security, cost, bandwidth shortage, etc., could impact on company’s migration to the cloud, the IT expert noted that Oracle solution is different in another way.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek recalled that not long after launch of its cloud services, Oracle also unveiled Oracle Social Network, which allows groups within the enterprise to set up impromptu teams, search and tag enterprise content, find prospective team members with needed expertise and co-edit documents.
The platform also coordinates a communications forum for working with consultants and partners outside the company.
“Oracle presently offers database as a service, database application as a service, middleware as a service and testing as a service and most importantly, Oracle delivers the full cloud lifecycle. No other company can do that in the cloud computing scheme.
“The Oracle cloud offers load balancing including security measures, and elastic expansion and contraction to keep resources in line with demand,” he added.