Cloud is useful but not for everyone: Oracle

Adopting the public Cloud may seem enticing to businesses, though Oracle cautions of viewing it as the panacea for everything.

Applications product management vice president, Doug Hughes, admits the Cloud is useful and Oracle believes in choice, but adds the decision to use it is not easy.

“A business will end up at a decision point at various sections of their IT journey, typically when they have to review obsolete hardware,” he said.

“At that time, they have the opportunity to evaluate the Cloud and decide if it is the answer or not.”

Hughes said each person will look at the Cloud differently by line of business, how mature the company and its IT is, and regulations.

“It should be part of the customer thought process and not necessarily be viewed as a decision that has to be made or else you are going to fall over,” he said.

Instead, Hughes said the final decision to adopt the public Cloud will depend on the “where and how” of the implementation.

A company’s maturity with their existing product set will also play a role, as well as whether they view it as an enabler in the way they are able to carry out the business in comparison to the competition.

Simplifying the updates

One of the big benefits of the Cloud from a financial side is the shift to a pure OpEx model.

If it is a private Cloud solution, there is a blend of CapEx and OpEx, whereas an on-premise solution is predominantly CapEx.

In addition to the advantage from a financial perspective, Hughes said it helps solve the issue customers have with keeping up to date with their software portfolio, which is often from different vendors.

“The need to take one to a new level of release is often a large undertaking for them, as they have to get all of the rest interfacing products to the right level,” he said.

What the Cloud can do is remove a lot of that complexity, as the software is updated by the provider and the latest version is automatically served to users.

“In addition to not worrying about maintaining it, businesses also don’t need the necessary skills to carry out the updates,” Hughes said.