How to Win the Cloud Jackpot

ByShaun Snapp

Executive Summary

  • The database is being commoditized, and this has a significant effect on Oracle.
  • This article covers the implications of this commoditization.

Introduction

The first wave of cloud computing commoditized hardware. The second is moving quickly up the stack to the software. Prime target: database.

Our References for This Article

If you want to see our references for this article and other related Brightwork articles, see this link.

Lack of Financial Bias Notice: The vast majority of content available on the Internet about Oracle is marketing fiddle-faddle published by Oracle, Oracle partners, or media entities paid by Oracle to run their marketing on the media website. Each one of these entities tries to hide its financial bias from readers. The article below is very different.

  • This is published by a research entity, not some dishonest entity that is part of the Oracle ecosystem. 
  • Second, no one paid for this article to be written, and it is not pretending to inform you while being rigged to sell you software or consulting services. Unlike nearly every other article you will find from Google on this topic, it has had no input from any company's marketing or sales department. As you are reading this article, consider how rare this is. The vast majority of information on the Internet on Oracle is provided by Oracle, which is filled with false claims and sleazy consulting companies and SAP consultants who will tell any lie for personal benefit. Furthermore, Oracle pays off all IT analysts -- who have the same concern for accuracy as Oracle. Not one of these entities will disclose their pro-Oracle financial bias to their readers. 
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Five years ago, worldwide database spend looked like this: Oracle leads, no AWS.

And today..

Microsoft beats Oracle 3 years in a row, mostly with SQL Azure. AWS ahead of SAP and IBM edging on Oracle.

What’s different about a database as a fully-managed service?

Just like cloud storage and compute, the manufacturer doesn’t matter. SLA does. We don’t care HOW service providers achieve 99% availability. That’s their job, not ours. Database service is no different than any other microservice. If a provider switches overnight from an Oracle microservice to any SLA-compliant microservice running Redshift or MariaDB, nobody notices, and nobody cares.

What’s the upside for customers?

You no longer need as many in-house DBAs. The fully loaded cost of an Oracle DBA is $120,000 per year. Labor is typically 60% of overall IT spend. The savings are substantial.

When the provider fully manages the database, you no longer need vendor tech support. Drop the 22% M&S annual fees and save BIG. You also save the annual 20% M&S on hardware and storage. That’s another 42% savings off your overall; IT spend every single year!