A lot of people might have thought Oracle\u2019s announcement of the \nautonomous database at last year\u2019s OpenWorld and its subsequent release \nearlier this year were the whole story, but there\u2019s a lot more, and \nTuesday\u2019s webcast featuring Larry Ellison was proof.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ellison must find his CTO role \u2014 since he handed the CEO reins to \nSafra Catz and Mark Hurd \u2014 to be stimulating and liberating at the same \ntime. Being CTO gives Ellison the ability to be highly creative in a \npart of the industry that plays to his strengths. It\u2019s a highly \ntechnical field where few septuagenarians make a mark, and it gives him \naccess to lots of smart people to trade ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His evident joy was on display Tuesday as he introduced the second \npart of the autonomous database. The announcement this spring focused on\n autonomous data warehousing, or ADW. Tuesday was all about autonomous \ntransaction processing, or ATP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oracle vs. Amazon
\nSome of the messaging was the same: The database provisions, maintains \nand repairs itself, for example. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing to do,\u201d Ellison said \nmore than once, suggesting that database administrators\u2019 jobs surely \nwill be redefined by the announcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nothing to do extends to nothing to break, and an embedded expert system very well might do a better job than the average DBA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Toward the end of his talk, Ellison showed a graphic that provided \nall the proof you might need to accept the efficacy of the automation. \nIt involved the NetSuite database. After 20 years, it has been well \nrefined \u2014 yet even for it, the expert system found ways to improve \nperformance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The autonomous database is an important economic milestone of sorts \ntoo. Database technology solidified in the 1970s and there has been \nlittle progress in automating the tasks of keeping a database operating \u2014\n until now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Automation, which this product offers in spades, is a sign that we\u2019re\n late in the life of a disruptive innovation (i.e., the relational \ndatabase). It\u2019s a sign of commoditization, and an indicator that we\u2019re \ndealing with the biggest quantities \u2014 and market share is essential for \nturning profits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s why I think Ellison took such delight in making invidious comparisons between Oracle\u2019s database and Amazon\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A Few Caveats
\nAmazon has a market share lead, and Oracle badly wants to reverse the \nsituation. That\u2019s why there\u2019s so much emphasis on price and performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For example, Oracle has introduced a guarantee that it can lower a \ncustomer\u2019s Amazon bill by half, and Ellison has boasted that his \ndatabase competitors all use Oracle for their own data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no doubt this market has been commoditizing, and that only \nthe biggest and most efficient producers will survive. Naturally, Oracle\n and Ellison expect to be in the winner\u2019s circle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It takes more than software to deliver the 99.995 percent up time \npromised. All of the autonomous database functionality requires Exadata \nhardware, and because it is fault tolerant, multiple servers are at the \nready.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the cloud configuration supported by Oracle data centers, \ncustomers experience serverless conditions \u2014 meaning that when the \ndatabase is not in use, it uses no server time and incurs no server \ncosts. Oracle also has made provisions for big customers that can afford\n all of the hardware and who wish to keep all data processing in-house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That said, the autonomous database represents a new era in IT, in \nwhich the default position is cloud. The assumption is that business \nwill be unimpeded, or at least less impeded, by IT systems that are slow\n or hard to change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With the full release of the autonomous database and its associated \nsecurity capabilities announced earlier this year, we\u2019ve reached the end\n of the line for common legacy applications. They will be around for \nyears, but it\u2019s hard to see how very many new ones will be made or sold<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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