Why the sun shines for Oracle and it’s Cloudy for others

Currently, third-party VPN appliances will not work with the Corente service. VPN endpoint locations will need to install a Corente Services Gateway.”

This Customer wanted another choice and that was impossible. That’s a pity.
EDIT (24/02/2017): The Oracle cloud, just as the others, is evolving very rapidly. Thanks to Philip Brown (@pbedba) for pointing me to these links about a Third-Party Gateway to an IP Network in Oracle Cloud and a Third-Party Gateway On-Premises to the Shared Network
So it seems that currently it is possible, which is good news! So hopefully the FAQ will be updated quickly.

Ok, let’s do database as a service then. It’s the #1 database company (and yes, I’m an Oracle fanboy), so that should work for a decent price. Right?

I’ll take the anonimized example I use in my presentation as well. 3 prod db’s, 35TB, 15TB and 6TB + their dataguard instances and then for each db 8 non-live versions (Dev, Dev New Release, Test, Test New Release, Int , Int New Release, Uat, Uat New Release). Then you immediately spot, WHY the cloud is an option. Treat this databases as cattle, not as pets. So automation and provisioning would be key. But for production, it should be feasible, right?
Let’s explore the options … In summary … not too much except the full blown exadata option, which was (compared to the Azure solution we had figured out) extremely expensive. Even then we left out mechanisms for cloning those databases in an automated way to non-prod systems.

It’s a bit a frustrating blogpost and I feel so sad writing and reading it. So for Oracle in my opinion, the sun is still shining on premises and I do hope for them the clouds will come, but the way it is now, I’m afraid they ‘ll miss this train. I believe more in the data on premises, but the cloud will definitely take it’s place and we should definitely embrace it. I totally agree with the statement “there will be a co-existence for the next 5 a 10 years”. Ofcourse some other hype will be there by then, but that’s another story.

But Oracle … you still can win this battle!

• Think about the past, think “back to the future”! How did you win ground in the past? Make it EASY TO USE. So, the trial subscription, make it really free to subscribe and unsubscribe without having to provide credit card details. Have a look at your colleagues of apex, they are doing a GREAT job!
• Support us. Support is key. If we choose to be dependent from a cloud provider, offer good support. Resolve (i don’t say respond, but really resolve ) SR’s really quick (< 0,5d in the local timezone) as speed in the cloud is key.
• No unplanned outages please! Make it stable,no suddenly disappearing machines. Outages are acceptable, but communicate them, be very transparant.
• Invest in a good extensive marketplace. Currently, you’re at the point of Microsoft Azure 2 years ago. You have the experience, the knowledge, the social network,… it must be feasible to fill this marketplace really quick with recent and decent software. Vendors are asking for it … hear them. Make the marketplace a shopping mall or a candy store.
• Engage your partners! It’s lonely at the top and if you’re high you can fall very low. If the product is mature, and if partners get easy access to features-to-come (compare it to private/public preview with Azure), customers will start to trust you and dare to take the move.
• Don’t push the “cloud-on-premise” too hard. It’s no cloud at all, it’s just an interface. People don’t get this idea. Keeping the costs of the own datacenter and pay extra for this service. It’s difficult to understand. I do believe in this mechanism as a “step to the cloud”, but make it free (or very very cheap). So that people can use the engineered systems to put their environment on, once done, call DHL/Fedex or some other partner and move them to the Oracle D.C. Done.
• Don’t change the rules if you can’t win and don’t get agressive. Yes I’m referring to the core-factor story regarding AWS and Microsoft Azure. I heard some customers making the comparison with children “if they can’t win, they change the rules” I couldn’t think of any response at that time … it felt they were right.
• Provide a clear cloud advantage. This can be for instance that if you are adding a compute layer to host your db yourself, the EE licenses would be included. Or change the license model (in the oracle cloud) that eg. all the options are “free” included in the EE license. If you make that cheaper than the on premises licenses, you will certainly win ground without putting the customers from other certified cloud providers in a strange position.
• Provide an easy mechanism that customers can go back/away very easily without extra cost. This sounds very strange, but people don’t like to be in prison, so they are very scared about “loosing their data to someone else” or going through a lengthy process to get it out the cloud again (if needed for one reason or another).

Basically, it comes down to one sentence: Listen to your customers, Listen to what they want, don’t push things through their throat. It’s not too late yet. People are interested in it, engage them, don’t scare them.