Amazon EC2 Ramps Up Cloud Offerings With Oracle Apps

Various renditions of the PeopleSoft customer relations management programs are but available via EC2, along with JD Edward Enterprise One enterprise resource planning software. As well included in the rollout is Oracle's E-Business Suite.

The move into EC2 makes PeopleSoft software significantly more accessible for smaller and mid-size businesses, and is one of a variety of interesting moves by Amazon recently tearing down barriers blocking cloud adoption for smaller businesses.

For example, last week Amazon announced a tool that imports existing VMWare virtual disk images so they can be run in the cloud. For the moment only Windows Server 2008 SP2 is supported, however other operating systems will be added over time. Businesses can either use the import service as a contingency backup of existing virtualized infrastructure, or use it to transition to the cloud with the minimum of difficulty and reconfiguration.

However, running CRM and ERP applications on EC2 is a little questionable, bearing in mind they're in the main installed on the customer's on-premises servers and typically accessed by staff locally. Accessing the applications over a LAN is likely to be a lot quicker than accessing via a cloud service over the Internet.

Skeptical view of the cloud

Oracle's Larry Ellison has traditionally taken a skeptical view of the cloud, branding it as just another computing fashion in 2008. Nevertheless, that hasn't stopped the company making its own cloud offerings, just as the Exalogic Elastic Cloud, or even launching a roadshow that touted the utility of cloud computing. Just last week Oracle announced Cloud Office, an online office suite like Google Docs, even though targeted at paying clients.