It was just a few years ago that cloud computing and cloud service brokerages were something of buzz terms, no one seemed to know exactly what they were, but everyone wanted them. Today, 80% of organizations have created a plan to govern cloud use as more and more people are beginning to understand and utilize computing and cloud brokerage services. Even the U.S. government, often times late to the party when it comes to innovation, plans to reduce its data center infrastructure expenditure by approximately 30% by using cloud computing models for IT services.
Although it’s still a relatively new industry, the biggest players have already established their claims for the most part. Still, that’s not stopping Oracle Corp. from launching an expansion of their cloud computing program in an effort to break into the market place dominated by companies like Amazon and Google. Though not a cloud services brokerage, Oracle will provide an actual Infrastructure-as-a-Cloud (IaaS) platform. The company made the announcement at the Oracle OpenWorld 2015 event earlier this month.
Oracle took aim at the top of the food chain when they compared their new service capabilities to Amazon’s Amazon Web Service (AWS), known as one of the leading, if not leader, in the current space.
Early financial reports have come back positive for the new competitor on the block, but the established industry juggernauts don’t have much to worry about yet. The 2016 first quarter revenues for Oracles cloud computing was about $2.5 billion, which was almost a 30% increase in that category from previous quarters, but still lagged well behind AWS’s $7+ billion revenue stream.
Up until this point Oracle’s primary focus has been in the database software business, expanding into the fiercely competitive IaaS market will be a struggle, but certainly not impossible. The opportunity will be there as the global market for cloud equipment is expected to reach $79.1 billion by 2018.
Cloud brokerage services can help bridge the gap between new clients and one of the biggest advantages they will have is in providing these new services to their current on-premise database clients. Instead of having to enlist cloud services brokers to help facilitate any sort of transition it should be a seamless transition to use the same provider and keep it all under one roof.
