Multi-cloud environments are becoming the de-facto cloud strategy among a majority of US businesses that have moved their applications to the cloud, but managing these complex infrastructures is creating new challenges that many companies are struggling to surmount—if they decide to move to the cloud at all.
These are among the key conclusions from a new report by Omdia Consulting, which analyzes the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of running workloads in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
Key findings from the Omdia SWOT report include:
- More than 52% of businesses report the inability to move workloads between clouds is slowing their adoption of cloud computing
- The alliance between Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Microsoft Azure plans to speed up cloud adoption, by offering businesses direct interconnection between these two clouds, integrating identity management, and honoring a collaborative support agreement
- Oracle’s open, enterprise-grade cloud architecture not only provides businesses with near zero downtime and no cost to onboard and offboard users, it also offers the most comprehensive sets of security standards and customer support services compared to competing cloud vendors
While most cloud infrastructure vendors offer companies an environment on which to run their mission-critical applications without having to manage a data center, invest in hardware, or install and update software, those vendors’ service, pricing, and support plans can vary widely.
In its recently published SWOT Assessment of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Omdia Consulting offers new insight into why companies should consider running their mission-critical workloads in the Oracle Cloud.
Because Oracle Cloud Infrastructure has built a reputation for reliability, companies are guaranteed more than 99.99% availability uptime, and fewer than four minutes per month for maintenance work, the report says.
Such high availability is particularly important, because banks that can’t process high-speed financial transactions or retailers who aren’t able to synchronize their ecommerce websites with their on-hand inventories and point-of-sale data, can lose revenue, frustrate customers, and damage their brands.
Mastering Multi-Cloud Environments
As an increasing number of businesses today live in a multi-cloud world, it’s important for cloud vendors to integrate their offerings with those of their competitors.
The Oracle and Microsoft alliance announced in June 2019 enables joint customers to deploy mission-critical enterprise workloads that span both Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure environments.
Such customers can run Azure analytics and AI, for example with Oracle Autonomous Database on the same workload. This not only makes it easier for companies to have a backup cloud to aid in disaster recovery, but also to split up workloads so that data architects and application developers can choose their preferred environments and tools.
The Oracle and Microsoft alliance also removes the burden of managing multiple service orders, networking configurations, and data transfers from different clouds across workloads.
Raising The Bar For Security Standards
The range of standards that Oracle provides compliance with is one of the most comprehensive among the leading cloud providers, according to Omdia’s SWOT report.
While currently compliant with ISO 27001, SOC1, SOC2, PCI DSS, HIPAA/HITECH, FedRAMP Medium, and FedRAMP High, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure also follows a media destruction process adhering to NIST SP 800-88r1 and DoD emergency destruction and secret classification standards.
A new feature in Oracle’s Gen 2 Cloud is Isolated Network Virtualization, which isolates physical network interfaces and cards from each other, isolating an attacker who has gained unauthorized access to the network. Through this process, Oracle helps companies protect against bad actors from attacking their networks when an instance, bare-metal, virtual-machine, or container, has been compromised.
Gaining Share Through Human Customer Support
While all cloud infrastructure vendors let their customers access online documentation and community forums for free, many of those vendors charge hefty fees for hands-on, expert support—like the kind you’ll need to fix a latency problem or network outage.
But companies running their workloads on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Free Tier, can get an enterprise-level support package, which includes two Oracle Autonomous Databases with powerful tools like Oracle Application Express (APEX) and Oracle SQL Developer, two Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Compute virtual machines, block, object, and archive storage, load balancer and data egress, and monitoring and modifications—for free.
It’s this kind of human customer care that has driven approximately 80% of Oracle’s customers to stay in the Oracle Cloud for between one and three years, and 21% of them committing to three-year subscriptions, according to Omdia’s SWOT analysis. The report also shows more than 50% of Oracle’s customers increase their spend once they have moved to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and the rate of new customers moving to Oracle Cloud is more than 150% year on year.
This level premium support, including zero fees for onboarding or offboarding customers to its eponymous Cloud Infrastructure, demonstrates Oracle’s strong commitment to be an open enterprise-grade cloud—earning its position as a top-five cloud provider in the world.
We live in a multi-cloud world and customers expect cloud providers to excel at interconnecting various platforms, applications, and workloads. Omdia’s report highlights several critical elements that make Oracle uniquely qualified to provide this interconnectivity, while offering exceptional performance, pricing, and support.
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