1. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is now a ‘viable option’ for general-purpose workloads, including non-Oracle ones

One example of a new service for non-Oracle workloads is Oracle Cloud VMware Solution, which lets companies like the Chilean telco Entel move VMware-based workloads to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure without rewriting them. Entel, after acquiring NexTel Peru in 2013, found itself juggling four data centers in two countries until it moved its critical business apps to Oracle Cloud. “One of the best things about Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is that we can run all of our VMware workloads and other mission-critical applications for two companies, in two regions, on one cloud infrastructure,” says Alfredo Vaz Pinto, Entel’s infrastructure manager. “For us, migrating VMware to Oracle was fast, easy, and inexpensive.”

There are two new Gartner reports we think are worth reading: “It’s Time to Include Oracle as a Viable Option When Evaluating Public Cloud Providers” and the 2020 Gartner “Solution Scorecard for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure IaaS+PaaS.” A subscription is required for the 2020 Gartner Solution Scorecard page.

2. You can get all Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services, running in your own data center, for the same price as public cloud

Keeping data in a particular location—whether inside a company’s own data center, or within a certain country—is often a business or regulatory requirement. Until recently, the “private clouds” used to meet such data residency needs have only offered businesses a small subset of the services offered in public clouds. Yet, most businesses want everything—all the vendor-managed services and security features, and all for the same price as a shared, public cloud.

With the launch in June of Oracle Dedicated Regions Cloud @ Customer, Oracle offers the same set of services and identical pricing as its public cloud. Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure offer only a subset of their public cloud offerings to run on-premises. With Dedicated Regions Cloud@Customer, Oracle offers all its services, with identical pricing to public cloud (with a minimum commitment).

3. Oracle can run high-performance computing workloads in the cloud

High-performance computing has largely stayed on-premises, since cloud infrastructure hadn’t surmounted the speed and latency challenge. Now, companies are increasingly looking to run their high-performance workloads in the cloud, such as those using computational fluid dynamics for digital product design, simulating drug molecules to discover a new vaccine, or analyzing drone images to increase crop yields.

AgroScout, for example, runs on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to help farmers produce more food on less acreage, using fewer synthetic chemicals. AgroScout’s software uses machine-learning algorithms to analyze drone images of field crops, and then identify which plants are infested with diseases and pests. Once identified, affected plants can be treated quickly, without spraying chemicals where there isn’t a problem.

Only by using the cloud could a startup such as AgroScout afford the high-performance computing resources to run such data-intensive workloads. AgroScout also benefits from a special Oracle program, Oracle for Startups, created to help world-changing startups get off the ground. “It’s about working with a company that I can walk with and grow with,” says Simcha Shore, CEO and founder of the Israeli startup.

For HPC workloads, AWS provides similar performance to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure but is more than 40% more expensive, and provides no local solid-state storage drives, half the random access memory, no remote direct memory access, and no performance service level agreements.

4. Oracle has a global footprint of cloud data centers, and it’s adding more

Oracle has 25 cloud regions in 12 countries on six continents to serve its global customer base, with plans for expanding to 36. Oracle has added 18 regions in the last 12 months alone, including new regions in Japan, Brazil, the Middle East, India, Germany, and the US.

“We’re doubling-down on our global expansion and rapidly scaling our public cloud around the world to meet growing customer demand,” said Clay Magouyrk, executive vice president, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, in a recent statement. “Enterprises need fully independent Cloud Regions in multiple sites and in-country, to meet data residency requirements and to safeguard disaster recovery measures.”

Having two cloud regions in India was a big factor in Manappuram Finance’s choice of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, after evaluating multiple vendors, including Amazon Web Services, Azure, and Alibaba. “Although our main Cloud Region is in Mumbai, Oracle has made it really easy for us to replicate our data, and quickly stand up a disaster recovery site in Hyderabad,” says Saiprasad Sivadasan, president of technology at Manappuram Comptech and Consulting, a subsidiary of Manappuram Finance.

5. Oracle’s autonomous cloud reduces human error and labor

Oracle has created the world’s first and only autonomous cloud, with the goal of reducing human errors and lowering labor costs. It launched Oracle Autonomous Database in 2018, its Autonomous Linux a year later, and this year added an Exadata Cloud@Customer service that includes Oracle Autonomous Database. That service lets a company get an autonomous database that Oracle runs and maintains but that physically sits in a company’s own data center.

Thinking about putting Oracle on your cloud short list? You can try Oracle Cloud Infrastructure including Oracle Autonomous Database, for free, and give it a test.