Oracle-Microsoft Partnership Developed Through Oracle's Database
Oracle-Microsoft Partnership Developed Through Oracle's Database by UCStrategies Staff
Rivals Oracle and Microsoft have announced an alliance through which the Oracle Database 12c will be used by Microsoft in its cloud offerings.
This is an unexpected alliance, and industry observers have noted that the partnership may have come about as a result of Microsoft running into limitations relating to scalability with its own SQL Server database operating on Windows. These issues have been raised as customers begin processing workloads to the cloud.
Similar partnerships with Salesforce.com and NetSuite are expected to be announced by Oracle in the upcoming future.
The CEO of Oracle, Larry Ellison, said: “We will be announcing technology partnerships with the most important, the largest and most important SaaS companies and infrastructure companies in the cloud. And they will be using our technology, committing to our technology for years to come. That's how important we are doing 12c. We think 12c will be the foundation of a modern cloud where you get multitenant applications with a high degree of security and a high degree of efficiency; you at least have to sacrifice one for the other.”
He added: “Again, I would call them a startling series of announcements with companies like Saleforce.com, NetSuite, Microsoft. All that happens next week, we will be giving you the details. These partnerships in the cloud I think will reshape the cloud and reshape the perception of Oracle Technology in the cloud. [Oracle Database] 12c, in other words, is the most important technology we've ever developed for this new generation of cloud security.”
Oracle Database 12c was debuted by the company at its Oracle OpenWorld event in October last year, but there is not a set release date for the product; the company has noted that it will begin to be shipped at some point this year.
This is not the first time rivals of Oracle have supported the company’s database, particularly as it is an industry standard for enterprise computing. SAP has created its SAP Business Suite applications to support the Oracle database, even though it remains a firm rival of the company in terms of applications.
The relational database from the company is under a lot of competitive pressure as new generations of databases are being developed. These include NoSQL (for "Not Only SQL") databases which can deal with big data challenges a lot more efficiently.
The goal of Oracle is to remain dominant in the market by placing its database in the cloud infrastructure "stacks" of a number of key software-as-a-service and infrastructure-as-a-service vendors.
Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller said that the partnership with Microsoft addresses issues regarding scalability with SQL Server running in the cloud. He asks: “Ever wondered why the Microsoft enterprise applications only had a SMB focus? And why Microsoft ran internally on SAP?”
There are some technical hurdles that the alliance must overcome; for example, Oracle must build support for Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization technology. At the moment, Oracle VM technology is offered with Oracle’s database software.
Holger stated that the partnership is advantageous to both Oracle and Microsoft. He said: “For a Microsoft partner, this makes your business more viable in areas where before the sizing teams would have cringed and where the hardware cost could have been prohibitive. For the Oracle database partners this expands the addressable market. And for ISVs in general this is great news – as you may now have the choice to develop in Java or C# – with the latter no longer being limited by database capacity.” (CY) Link