Oracle clarifies its cloud strategy

In April 2012 Oracle updated industry analysts about its strategic directions for fiscal 2013. These include cloud computing in all its guises, from private to public and hybrid clouds, as then as infrastructure-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service, and software-as-a-service offerings. The company took its time to embrace cloud, however it now seems to be making good progress.

Oracle was relatively slow to recognize the importance of cloud computing, as members of its surprisingly frank customer panel pointed out while the recent analyst event. Nevertheless, these customers as well agreed that Oracle has after all got its act at the same time. The company's overarching marketing message for 2013 of “simplify IT" and "power extreme research” is a good fit for its expanding cloud strategy. For Oracle, cloud computing, among other themes, is the focus of a series of high-level “business transformation” marketing campaigns. Oracle is right. It needs to emphasize the transformational effect of cloud computing. For all that, instead of focusing too much on innovation, it should do more to explain how it can help clients go through this transformation. It should as well lead by example, and it would be good to know more about the way in which Oracle itself is coming to terms with cloud computing.

A March 2012 OAUG survey on application delivery strategies as well reflects the appeal of hosting services. Should the contingency arise, it paints a brighter picture when it comes to the adoption of cloud computing in general by Oracle application users. Of the 364 respondents, 29% plan to move to private clouds and 17% to public clouds in the then 12 months.

Oracle has moved beyond SaaS into business process-as-a-service territory. Ovum does not define BPaaS as "outsourced SaaS" nevertheless as an inter-application process-centric extension of SaaS. For instance, pursuant to this agreement the “B2C customer experience” marketing banner Oracle focuses on the integration of Oracle WebCenter Sites, Oracle Siebel Marketing, Oracle Endeca, Oracle ATG Commerce, Oracle Financials, Procurement, and Supply Chain, as so then as Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service to achieve a consistent and personalized experience across all channels. The company takes a BPaaS approach not only to B2C yet also B2B customer experience, also as human resource management, enterprise resource planning, and supply chain management. Just in case to the original CRM and HRM elements of Oracle Public Cloud, Ovum expects the ERP elements to go live to clients by early summer 2012.

Once the BPM component of Oracle Fusion Middleware offering is added to Oracle Public Cloud, this inter-application-centric approach will be strengthened by a new development: Oracle process accelerators. The first two accelerators, Travel Request Management and Document Routing and Approval, shipped in early May 2012. They are built using Oracle BPM Suite, leveraging other Oracle solutions and applications as needed by the business process being supported.

At a PaaS level, Oracle plans to deliver a cloud-centric application lifecycle management environment with integrated task/defect-tracking, source repository, build facilities, and IDE Integration. This is not a new idea and is akin to VMware's Code2cloud approach. Should the contingency arise, the service is not but available. It is still a positive development. We expect more SaaS-based ALM functionality as so then as more services that will help developers run their business, not just their applications, on Oracle Public Cloud. The company is already offering payment services and there are talks of a marketplace.

The rest of the industry

Like the rest of the industry, Oracle is talking about the need to cater for web, mobile, and social applications, and is positioning its public cloud as a key enabler for all of these and hybrids thereof. It as well understands that public clouds not only deliver infrastructure and software resources, however also data resources. Potentially, it has all the elements for a data-centric approach to cloud computing, yet its data-centric message is currently not as integrated and articulate as it should be. We expect more synergy between its Big Data and cloud computing plans, and more details about the way Oracle plans to support a supply chain of data providers and consumers. We as well expect more details about the way in which Oracle itself is going to use the data collected by its SaaS applications to create benchmark-type offerings.