Cloud, Big Data, Mobile: Oracle Ups Application Ante
Oracle on Tuesday unveiled tighter integration between Oracle applications and the cloud with a wide range of new offerings targeting big data, mobility and the need for better management of the continuing explosion of customers' data
Thomas Kurian, Oracle executive vice president of product development, used his Tuesday keynote at Oracle OpenWorld to introduce new ways for customers to take advantage of the Oracle Cloud to run their apps in the same fashion they have become used to.
Kurian also introduced new software for taking advantage of big data analytics and for adding mobile capabilities to Oracle's wide range of enterprise applications, expanding on the strategies introduced Sunday by Oracle Executive Chairman and Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison.
[Related: Ellison: New Oracle Tech Automates, Modernizes Apps]
About 62 million people per day already log into the Oracle Cloud, and customers carry out 23 billion transactions every day using, Kurian said.
"This growth is driven by one simple fact: More people want to use Oracle software without having to run software," he said. "And if you're one of those, we encourage you to try the market-leading cloud software."
New for Oracle's Platform-as-a-Service, or PaaS, line of solutions are the Oracle Database Service for Oracle 11g or Oracle 12c database management systems and Oracle Java Services for Oracle 11g or Oracle 12c WebLogic.
These services automate all the functions that users have done manually in the past to bring applications to the cloud, as well as ensure the tools developers used to develop on-premise applications work in the same fashion when developing applications for the cloud, Kurian said.
An Oracle employee showed in an on-stage demonstration how existing developer tools for the Oracle database can be used to set up a database in the cloud, size it, configure backup and specify policies. That employee said the full state of an Oracle application including the operating system can be ported quickly to the cloud, with drivers and other parts that may not work properly in the cloud automatically being updated.
Social media is also a big part of Oracle's cloud push and is targeted specifically at line-of-business users, Kurian said.
He introduced the new Oracle Document Cloud Services for secure collaboration over the cloud, as well as the Oracle Social Network Cloud service which looks and acts like Facebook to allow collaboration across cloud services.
NEXT: Making Mobility, Big Data Easy With The Oracle Cloud
Also new is Oracle Integration Cloud Service to help connect cloud services to on-premise services, and the Oracle Process Cloud Service for modeling business processes across the cloud and on-premise, Kurian said.
On the Software-as-a-Service, or SaaS, side, Oracle is making it easier for customers to target marketing by combining a variety of customer identifiers including home addresses, email IDs, IP addresses, phone numbers and Facebook information, Kurian said.
"We provide the technology to build a cross-channel, cross-identity profile of the user. ... (It's) simple, easy-to-use, integrated into a single platform," he said.
Kurian also introduced new solutions to help improve customer efficiency and performance in big data analytics and mobile platform areas.
One such solution is the Oracle Database In-Memory option for Oracle Database which works with virtually any existing Oracle Database-compatible application including Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning (Oracle ERP), Oracle Supply Chain Management (Oracle SCM) and Oracle Customer Experience (Oracle CX).
All Oracle applications are automatically certified to run Oracle Database In-Memory option, Kurian said.
Also new is Oracle Big Data SQL, which allows customers to keep Hadoop data in a NoSQL database, Kurian said. It allows customers to access Hadoop data with all the SQL tools and governance capabilities.
"It allows you to give Hadoop to your customers who understand SQL," he said.
He also introduced Oracle Big Data Discovery to help customers do analytics, exploration and transformation of Hadoop over the cloud.
On the mobility side, Oracle introduced two new solutions that bring mobile security to Oracle applications, Kurian said.
The first is the Oracle Mobile App Framework, which takes the codebase of an existing application and makes it available to run off iOS and Android devices without the need to rewrite a single line of code, he said.
The second is Oracle Mobile Security which applies the same access security settings for both mobile and local access device use.
"The value that we offer to our customers is an end-to-end mobile development platform," he said.
PUBLISHED SEPT. 30, 2014