From pain to worship Ellison, why is Bokong cloud computing?

Until the recent 2009, Ellison was also the largest cloud-computing attacker in the IT industry. He questioned what the cloud was, accusing VCs of being fashionable and refusing to accept cloud computing as the current buzzword.

Since then, however, Ellison's view of cloud computing seems to have changed. Now, Ellison stands out to tell the benefits of Oracle's growing cloud of products. Mr Ellison even disclosed last week that Oracle would extend the Oracle Cloud from SaaS (software as a service) and PAAs (Platform-service) to IaaS (infrastructure as a service) at the OpenWorld show next week.

Some say Ellison's disdain for cloud computing reflects the threat that Salesforce.com, Amazon Cloud services and other cloud software vendors may pose to Oracle. Mr. Ellison is Ellison, says Michael Fauscette, an IDC analyst who studies Oracle's Michael Fossett. Many of the words he said were contradictory. The question now is how the idea of "fear, uncertainty, suspicion", which Mr. Ellison spreads, will have an impact on Oracle's own plans.

Ellison's view of cloud computing can be explained by the evolution of the past five years. There are a number of video clips on YouTube that suggest that Ellison attacks cloud computing as a fad, absurdity, and nonsense.

"When will this idiotic behavior stop," Mr. Ellison said at an analyst meeting in 2008. He has repeatedly asked "What is cloud computing?" in public. In that video, Mr. Ellison continued, Oracle will go into the cloud to market and sell. "I mean, we don't fight this thing," he said. Maybe we should advertise. I don't understand what we do in cloud computing that is different from changing advertising words in some ads. It's a crazy thing. ”

A year later, Ellison also rejects cloud computing. Cloud computing, he says, has become an all-encompassing term for any computing in the business. "I am against its absurdity. ”

Since then, Ellison seems to have embraced the idea of cloud computing. Over the past two years, Oracle has been actively building a broad cloud strategy through in-house development and investment mergers. Mr. Ellison said at the Oracle OpenWorld Conference two years ago that Oracle's cloud is a comprehensive development and execution environment that can actually run all of the user's applications. In a news conference this summer, Mr. Ellison said he changed the name of Oracle's cloud strategy from Oracle to Oracle.

In software, Oracle now provides more than 100 applications in cloud-based software, the service model, including software versions of two major acquisitions over the past two years. Oracle bought the human resources and talent management company, Taleo, with $1.9 billion in February this year, and purchased 1.4 billion dollars from its customer service application RightNow last October. These applications, as well as other applications for financial management, procurement and social networking, are provided through this cloud.

Oracle also has a platform that serves products. Developers can use the Java Development Framework and Oracle database management and middleware software tools on this platform to create and deploy applications, all using Oracle's Exadata and Exalogic hardware devices.

Mr. Ellison will launch another cloud platform branch of Oracle at the OpenWorld meeting next week. Ellison had hinted that it was a platform, a service product.

Mr. Ellison's public statement on cloud computing seems to be 180-degree turns, should someone throw an egg on his face? "You can say that," said Andrew Bartels, an analyst with Forrester Research at the market study firm, Andrew Baters. But he defended Mr. Ellison by saying that CEOs, especially outspoken CEOs, like to make tough statements about what will happen to the world around them. Another point is that Mr. Ellison admits that the world has changed since he made that comment earlier, and he has done something about it. Mr. Ellison has said Oracle has used the past 7 years to build its own cloud platform. According to this calculation, when Ellison commented on the "absurdity" of cloud computing, Oracle has been working on the internal cloud Platform for Research and development.

However, Bartels says Cloud is a challenge for many software vendors. Although cloud-based software accounts for only 8% to 10% of all current software sales, this is a slightly misleading figure because the entire software revenue cake also includes maintenance costs associated with locally licensed software. Vendors cannot charge this fee in SaaS mode.

About 40% of new apps are purchased in SaaS mode, Bartels said. The cloud will not pose a threat to Oracle in the short term. In the long run, however, software companies that rely on services and software to maintain revenue may be in a difficult position. Perhaps that is why Ellison used to reject cloud computing and Oracle is now actively becoming part of cloud computing. (Compiled/Populus euphratica)

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)