Oracle announces IaaS offering, private cloud, new database and Exadata X3

Larry Ellison launches new products and services at Oracle World in San Francisco, and goes on the offensive against IBM and EMC

Oracle has launched a new Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offering, a new private cloud product, an updated database and a new iteration of its Exadata server at Oracle World in San Francisco today.

CEO Larry Ellison made the announcements in his Sunday evening keynote to a room packed with over 10,000 customers, partners and press.

Oracle's new IaaS service completes its cloud offerings, complementing its SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) and PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) products.

"We didn't decide to get into cloud computing last year, we decided in 2004 when we started our Oracle Fusion project," said Ellison – perhaps slightly defensive over his firm's lateness to market with cloud services.

"It took a long time to build a complete suite of cloud applications and the all-important platform, which we call Fusion middleware. We have a huge advantage in platform solutions in the cloud because we are the number one platform company in the world," he claimed.

"In our first year of serious cloud service, we discovered it's not enough to be an applications and platform provider. People who take cloud seriously need a combination of SaaS, PaaS, and also IaaS."

He explained that Oracle customers who run SaaS and PaaS services have told the company that they need to build new applications in the cloud, and also to migrate existing applications, and the only way to meet those needs is to bring an IaaS offering to the table.

"We're the number two applications provider behind SAP," he admitted. "And the the number one platform provider behind nobody. Our customers need all three layers of service, and high quality in those layers."

Oracle Private Cloud

His second announcement was Oracle Private Cloud, which will run on Fusion.

"Applications like PeopleSoft and Siebel will run in our private cloud, because Oracle middleware and databases run in the Oracle Private Cloud," said Ellison, explaining that anything that runs in the firm's existing services will also work in its new private cloud offering as the platform operates the same technology.

"It's an extension of the Oracle [public] Cloud. You can't tell the difference, the software is identical," he said.

"Oracle is committed to delivering services at all three levels of the cloud, but that doesn't mean we forget the lessons of the last 20 years of working with computers. Industry standards are still important. All the code is written in Java, the database runs industry-standard SQL. Scalability and reliability are very important, it's no less important than if you were running it in your own datacentre."

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Oracle announces IaaS offering, private cloud, new database and Exadata X3

Larry Ellison launches new products and services at Oracle World in San Francisco, and goes on the offensive against IBM and EMC

Oracle 12c

Ellison's third announcement was a new iteration of the firm's database, which it has named Oracle 12c, with the "c" standing for "cloud". He described it as "the first multi-tenancy database in the world," drawing a round of appreciative applause from the audience.

"There are separate memory processes allocated to each database," he explained. I've been critical of multi-tenancy implemented in the application layer in the past, because it's a mistake. Traditionally, you've always had separate databases for each application, often with its own dedicated hardware.

"12c introduces the notion of the 'container database'. It will have separate 'pluggable' databases, each of which has dedicated memory, and you can plug multiple separate databases into that private container. The result is it's more scalable, with less hardware needed, with lower operational costs. Instead of doing multi-tenancy in the application layer, we're doing it in the database layer."

Exadata X3

Ellison's final announcement was a new iteration of Exadata (an appliance designed to support both transactional and analytical database systems), which is called X3.

He was keen to highlight its high performance capabilities to the audience, comparing it to competing offerings from Oracle's rivals.

"If you thought the old Exadatas were fast, you ain't seen nothing yet," joked Ellison.

Exadata X3 has 200 Terabytes (TB) of memory in each server, meaning many applications will almost never need to access the disk, which will greatly speed response times.

"And we're keeping the price the same," added Ellison, which drew the second round of applause of the night.

"Database write times are now 20 times faster, and it uses less power," he said. "SAP has an in-memory machine [called HANA]. We have 26TB, they offer 0.5TB."

He also used his keynote to attack products from both IBM and EMC, claiming that Exadata is much faster than both the IBM Power 7 servers, and EMC's VMax series, whilst also being cheaper.

The Exadata X3 list price is currently $200,000, although Ellison admitted that the actual price will be lower as "Oracle sales people love to make deals".