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Product News
July 8, 2020
Announcing Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer and Oracle Autonomous Database on Exadata Cloud@Customer
Today, I wanted to share two announcements. First, I am excited to announce the availability of Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer – a fully-managed cloud region bringing ALL of Oracle’s second-generation cloud services in customer’s datacenter, starting from only a $500K/month commitment over three years, purely via consumption. Designed for enterprises that need to keep certain applications on-premises for data residency or stringent latency requirements, while using the public cloud for everything else. Now, before diving into the details, I wanted to share a bit of a recap about Oracle’s journey on building a second-generation cloud and how that continues to evolve Oracle’s Cloud@Customer offerings.
Enterprises have found it costly and difficult to move to first-generation cloud infrastructure because of the inherent mismatch between traditional application architectures and cloud architecture, and for workloads that can’t move to the public cloud these challenges are magnified. Enterprises have access to only a small subset of cloud services on-premises, and that too with a limited set of features and capabilities compared to what’s available in the public cloud. This why we developed Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) - a second generation cloud that continues to deliver the benefits of first-generation cloud (self-service, ease of use, scalability, just in time provisioning) while enabling the most complex and demanding workloads to “just work” on cloud infrastructure that offers industry leading price-performance and the highest levels of security.
Naturally, customers that couldn’t move some workloads to the public cloud demanded Oracle’s second-generation cloud infrastructure to be delivered on-premises. So, starting in 2019, we delivered Exadata Gen 2 Cloud@Customer, bringing the outstanding performance and reliability of Exadata as a managed service in customer’s datacenter. Large banks, healthcare providers, insurance, and pharmaceutical companies (to name a few industries) were able to modernize their data infrastructure using an OPEX model, reduce maintenance overhead, and reduce TCO by up to 47%, all while keeping data on premises to comply with regulation and internal policies.
We quickly learned that delivering a single high value service like Exadata or select services (like compute and storage) is not enough for most Enterprises. We heard two consistent themes from customers that are delighted with our Exadata Gen 2 Cloud@Customer offering a) they want the full experience of the public cloud on-premises to help them consolidate entire applications on second-generation cloud infrastructure and b) they want access to ALL modern cloud services on-premises so that they can innovate at the rate of Oracle’s innovation. One key observation while building our second-generation cloud is that customers are willing to adopt new technologies when they are given the controls and flexibility to reduce risk. By bringing modern cloud services on-premises, customers can operate legacy applications effectively and give many applications the best chance of being incrementally upgraded. Our customers challenged us to bring ALL of Oracle’s second-generation cloud services on-premises, in a pay-for-what-you-use fashion, with the same assurances and SLAs of the public cloud.
Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer brings ALL of Oracle’s second-generation cloud services on-premises, starting from only a $500K/mo consumption-based commitment.
With Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer customers retain control of data and physical security and get new features and security updates the moment they are made available in Oracle’s public cloud regions. Customers can rely on the exact same SLAs, APIs and tools available in Oracle’s public cloud for a truly consistent development experience. And enterprises can meet their most demanding data residency and latency requirements, reduce datacenter costs and modernize legacy applications on industry-leading cloud infrastructure using services like Container Engine for Kubernetes, Oracle Autonomous Database, API Gateway, Events Service, and Oracle Streaming Service with full compatibility with Apache Kafka, to name a few. In addition, Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer is also certified to seamlessly run Oracle SaaS products like ERP-Financials, HCM, & SCM, making it the only product to offer a completely integrated cloud experience for IaaS, PaaS and SaaS software on-premises.
So why did customers task us with this challenge? With hundreds of successful Exadata Gen 2 Cloud@Customer deployments, customers demanded more of Oracle’s second-generation cloud infrastructure on-premises. And they told us that other cloud providers like AWS and Azure failed to meet their expectations. With AWS and Azure, they get access to a select number of services on-premises, and worse these services lack capabilities compared to what’s available in their public cloud. For example, AWS Outposts only offer a limited set of compute instances and block storage, and offers no access to AWS Lambda, Amazon Aurora, Amazon DynamoDB, or Amazon Redshift. Contrast that with Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer which offers ALL public cloud services including all of Oracle’s database products including Autonomous Database. This is with the same performance, manageability and availability SLAs offered in Oracle’s public cloud. Moreover, with AWS Outposts customers are asked to size workloads to physical rack counts, making workload mobility less flexible. Also, AWS Outposts racks are tied to “home” regions which exposes customer metadata outside of the customers’ datacenter – not to mention reducing availability to a select few geographies.
Lets’ do a quick pass on how these offerings compare with each other.
| Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer | AWS Outposts | Azure Stack Hub | |
|---|---|---|---|
| # of Services | Over 50 services. ALL services offered in Oracle’s second-generation public cloud regions. | Five services. Limited set of compute and storage options. | Under 10 services. Azure Stack Hub supports a subset of Azure services. Actual services vary based on what an organization or service provider. |
| Compute | All Bare Metal, VM, HPC and GPU shapes, and OS Management. | Some EC2 VMs | Some Azure VMs |
| Storage | Object Storage Archive Storage Block Volume (includes Local NVMe SSD) File Storage Storage Gateway Data Transfer |
EBS gp2 (SSDs) | Blob Storage Queue Storage Managed Disks |
| Data Management | Autonomous Data Warehouse Autonomous Transaction Processing Database Cloud Service: Bare Metal Database Cloud Service: Virtual Machine Exadata Cloud at Customer Exadata Cloud Service Oracle MySQL Database Service Oracle NoSQL Database Cloud Service Data Catalog Data Flow Data Safe Data Science Digital Assistant Integration Cloud |
Amazon RDS | Table Storage |
| Developer Services | Container Engine for Kubernetes Container Registry API Gateway Events Functions Content and Experience WebLogic Server Visual Builder |
EKS ECS |
Functions |
| Management | Email Delivery Monitoring Notifications Resource Manager Tagging |
None | None |
| Analytics | Analytics Cloud Streaming |
None | None |
| Security | Audit IAM Compliance Documents and Vault |
None | Key Vault |
| Networking | DNS and Traffic Management Load Balancing Health Checks Fast Connect and VCN |
VPC Extension Local Gateway |
Express Route |
| Marketplace | Yes | No | Yes |
| Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer | AWS Outposts | Azure Stack Hub | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Operations | Customers get new capabilities and security updates moment they are available in public regions | AWS remotely manages Outposts but does not offer SLAs. | Not fully managed. Customers Do NOT get new capabilities and security updates when available in Azure public regions. |
| Availability SLA | 99.95% includes planned downtime | No Coverage | No Coverage |
| Performance SLA | Covered (Disk IOPS and Network) | No Coverage | No Coverage |
| Manageability SLA | Covered (API Error Rate) | No Coverage | No Coverage |
| Connectivity | Fully self-contained region; meta-data and API operations remain local to DC. Upon loss of connectivity API availability is NOT degraded. Simple FastConnect connection for LAN access to region. | Meta-data and control-plane operations NOT local to DC. Upon loss of connectivity API availability is degraded. Setup two link aggregation groups (LAG) and VLANs on a per rack basis for LAN access | Disconnected with feature trade offs. Complex border, switch, DNS and firewall setup for LAN/outbound access |
| Economics | Pay for what you use – purely OPEX. Oracle manages capacity at no additional cost, as long as customers meet their spend commitment. | Pay by the rack. Capacity planning customers’ responsibility - purchase/replace racks | Pay for Azure Stack Hub services, and separately for OEM hardware. Pay for installation, upgrade and decommission. |
| Compliance Certifications | SOC 1, SOC 2, ISO 27001, ISO 27017, and implements controls set in National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 800-53 rev4 publication | None available | None available |
| Support | 24/7 remote support part of the consumption-based commitment. | Requires separate purchase of “Enterprise Support” for 24/7 remote support. | Contact Azure Stack Hub operator for support. |
Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer meets customers’ expectations. We strongly believe that if customers asked other cloud vendors to provide what we have built, it would take other cloud providers several years to deliver such a capability, at 10x or 20x cost premium. Also, we did one better and certified Oracle SaaS products like ERP-Financials, HCM, & SCM and made them available on-premises to offer a fully integrated experience that customers can’t replicate anywhere else.
Below I’ll walk you through some use cases and customers that have chosen Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer for specific problems that they wanted to solve for their IT workloads.
Run mission-critical, latency-sensitive applications with data locality requirements on a fully managed cloud region
Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer allows you to run mission-critical trading and exchange platforms at desired single-digit millisecond latencies using a fully managed cloud region that gives you access to all of Oracle’s modern cloud services and APIs. Deliver banking, payments processing, and risk management services to customers and financial clients from in-country locations to meet data locality requirements, including Oracle products like FLEXCUBE, and Modern Risk and Finance. Easily apply analytics and machine learning services to health management systems that need to remain on-premises due to latency processing requirements.
Consolidate legacy apps on high-performance cloud infrastructure that comes with SLAs and tools to modernize
With Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer you can chose from Bare Metal Compute, VMs and GPUs, database services like Autonomous Database and Exadata Cloud Service, container-based services like Container Engine for Kubernetes, and analytics services like Data Flow that allow you to seamlessly lift-shift legacy workloads and consolidate them on a single platform to dramatically improve TCO without requiring re-architecture. You also get access to a full set of development services like API Gateway and Events Service that can help you incrementally modernize the stack in-place, reducing the risk and expense of adopting new technologies. You can run applications with the same SLAs for availability, manageability and performance as Oracle’s public region and bring cloud services closer to data and applications that won’t move to the public cloud for several years.
Nomura Research Institute (NRI), Ltd. is the largest consulting firm and IT solutions provider in Japan. “With Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer, we can use Oracle Exadata as a cloud service and achieve greater agility, such as seamless expansion, while maintaining high availability at the same level as on-premises. Built in our own datacenter, it also enables us to not only provide SOC2 report based on Japanese security standards in financial industries, but it also allows us to access broader cloud services and tools provided by Oracle and further increase our business value for our customers."
- Tomoshiro Takemoto, Senior Corporate Managing Director, NRI
Run an entire portfolio of IT workloads on a single-tenant, flexible cloud infrastructure
Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer enables customers, like sovereign nations, to run an entire IT portfolio on a single-tenant cloud infrastructure with physical control of infrastructure and data to help meet the most demanding data sovereignty requirements. Securely store and process data that needs to remain on premises or in countries where there is no Oracle public region, or where a public cloud region is not an option.
Oman Information Technology and Communications Group (OICTG) is an entity owned by State General Reserve Fund (SGRF) of the Government of Oman. “Oman Information and Communications Technology Group (OICTG), is committed to propel and shape the Sultanate’s ICT sector. Our investments, focused initiatives and bespoke partnerships aim to unlock the full potential of ICT. So, by fostering Omani talents, we will actively support the ongoing diversification of Oman’s economic development as outlined in His Majesty Sultan Haitham bin Tarik’s Oman 2040 Vision. Furthermore, and to meet the Sultanate’s needs of digital transformation, our centralized, innovatively structured digital framework will support the ownership and management of cloud-ready IT services. The OITCG’s sustainable, economically sensitive budget and attainable, realistic time-bound goals will guarantee maximum operational performance, flexible scalability and a secure data residency file under the accountable canopy of the Oman Investment Authority.”
- HH Sayyid Kamil Fahad Al-Said; Chairman of Oman ICT Group
“Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer enables a variety of use cases, from migrating Oracle ERP and CRM applications to deploying custom developed applications using Oracle Database, as well as implementing Digital Innovation Services (Blockchain, AI, Big Data) and High-Performance Computing (HPC), all while following the country regulations regarding data sovereignty.”
- Said Al-Mandhari; CEO - Oman ICT Group
Autonomous Database on Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer
I am also excited to announce the availability of Oracle Autonomous Database on Exadata Cloud@Customer, bringing Oracle’s Autonomous Database’s self-driving, self-securing, and self-repairing capabilities to customers on Exadata Cloud@Customer. Available via Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer, and as a stand-alone offering that can be purchased just for Exadata Cloud@Customer. Customers can now bring the pioneering capabilities of Autonomous Database to workloads on-premises that can’t move to the public cloud for regulatory and latency reasons. With this release, we have made our most advanced database capabilities – Autonomous Database – available on the industry-leading performance and reliability of Exadata as a managed service in customer’s datacenter.
Oracle Autonomous Database on Exadata Cloud@Customer automates database and infrastructure tuning and patching, mitigates manual processes and human error, increases availability and security and reduces operational costs. It enables autonomous provisioning and maintenance of not just the infrastructure but also the data management layer - empowering IT teams to change their focus from data management to generating value from the data stored in the systems managed by Oracle.
Oracle offers responsibility and accountability for the health and function of the database using state of the art artificial intelligence, and customers can benefit from the built-in best practices that Oracle has accrued based on its extensive experience in building and operating databases for the world’s most difficult and complex applications.
Below are some of key benefits that customers can achieve by using Oracle Autonomous Database on Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer:
- Autonomous Database on Exadata Cloud@Customer delivers a cloud service (pay-per-use, elasticity, and cloud operational model) on-premises to help customers meet the most demanding data residency, privacy and latency requirements.
- Dynamic scaling of database resources both up and down based on real-time workload demands, combined with per-second consumption pricing, aligns costs with workload requirements and lowers TCO.
- Customers can consolidate more databases and achieve up to 7x greater total database size and run them faster with up to 25x more SQL IOPS and 100x more SQL throughput than AWS Outposts running RDS.5
- Independent researchers have found that Exadata Cloud at Customer delivers 256% ROI, $1.9M in annual benefits and a break-even point of six months. Researchers have also found that Exadata Cloud at Customer helps companies accelerate time-to-market by 40% and reduces TCO by 47%.
- Reduces customers’ infrastructure management costs by up to 80% and database management costs by up to 90% because they only have to focus on schemas and the data inside their databases, and not running and scaling database infrastructure.
Continued Success Stories with Autonomous Database
- Intive moved to Autonomous Data Warehouse from legacy on-premises infrastructure and found that they were able to increase the quality of their development environment by 4x by eliminating manual patching and database tuning, running analytics 10x to 70x faster, which translated into 3x faster application development, and lowered their overall costs by 67%.
- MESTEC uses Autonomous Transaction Processing to reduce infrastructure and labor costs by 50%, and increased performance by up to 600%—while using only half the CPUs.
- Sentry Data Systems chose Exadata Cloud@Customer as the only offering that could meet their strict healthcare data privacy requirements, save them costs by consolidating multiple standalone database platforms onto a single high-performance system, and process transactions and reports 60% faster than before.
I am excited to have shared these two announcements with you today. Get started with Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud at Customer, and with Autonomous Database on Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer.
--Clay
Footnotes
1. https://aws.amazon.com/outposts/faqs/ as of June 20202. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/outposts/index.html as of June 2020
3. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-stack/hub/ as of June 2020
4. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure-stack/operator/azure-stack-overview?view=azs-2002 as of June 2020
5. Comparison calculated as of July 1, 2020 from Exadata X8M, Exadata Cloud@Customer, AWS Outposts pricing, AWS RDS, EBS, latency, throughput
Future Product Disclaimer
The following is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, timing, and pricing of any features or functionality described for Oracle’s products may change and remains at the sole discretion of Oracle Corporation.