Oracle founder, chairman and CTO Larry Ellison on stage at Oracle OpenWorld
SAN FRANCISCO – Oracle founder, chairman and CTO Larry Ellison said with the new Oracle Cloud Applications Release 9 it is possible to move any database from the data centre to the cloud at the touch of a button.
Ellison, who is 70, last week stepped down as CEO of Oracle to become the company’s CTO and chairman. In his keynote at Oracle OpenWorld Ellison said that the company has been working on cloud computing for over 30 years but hadn’t called it cloud computing, it was the evolution of computing all along.
“Several years ago it dawned on me that we would have to provide serves at all three layers of the cloud – software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (Paas) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS).
“We couldn’t simply be a specialist in SaaS like Salesforce.com or IaaS like Amazon. We are compel;led, we have no choice, we have to deliver SaaS, PaaS and IaaS together because of a promise I made to customers 30 years ago.”
From a SaaS perspective Oracle now has 161 SaaS applications. “We have the largest portfolio of SaaS apps than anybody.
“A major upgrade to the platform in 2014 means you can move any database from the data centre to the cloud at the touch of a button.”
Ellison said that a key facet of Oracle’s strategy is to cover as much ground as possible across the business software spectrum.
“We have more SaaS than anybody else. We are the number one player in marketing, battling neck and neck with Salesforce.com; we are the leader in high-end e-commerce and an innovator in that space; and for the last number of quarters we have been the leader in selling core HR applications and we are the leading talent management software platform for the world. We are leading in high end-financials, ERP, supply chain management. We have more apps and initiatives than anybody from the applications to the underlying data.
“We design sales software to help sales people sell more. 2014 has been a busy year for Oracle in terms of SaaS. We are the first company selling high-end ERP in the cloud, which is the third wave of our cloud strategy.”
Ellison said Oracle has more 160,000 enterprise customers of its enterprise performance management platform for the cloud, acquiring 2,000 new customers in 2014.
Keeping a 30 year-old promise
He said that the policy of building software, platforms and infrastructure marching in step was built on a promise he made to customers 30 years ago.
“The first Oracle product was called Oracle 2 because we didn’t believe anyone would buy the first version. The CIA ended up being our first customer.
“Along came PCs and client/servers and data was democratised.
“We’ve been doing cloud for the last 30 years, moving apps and platforms to the next generation of tech without you having to change a single line of code.
“You can now move any Oracle database to the cloud at the touch of a button, not only moving it but having it automatically modernised. You can move any Java application to the cloud at the touch of a button.
“The promise all along has been allowing businesses to modernise while preserving their investment.”
