If your main business consists of selling very expensive licenses on a per-node or per-cpu basis of a relational database then it makes perfect sense to speak these words. That doesn't make them true though.
The cloud is a real game changer, even though we are still working out exactly what it will do for us and how to deal with lots of issues (privacy, responsibility, reliability) it's got the established software businesses that came to power in the 80's and 90's quaking in their boots.
This will change the landscape of computing more than anything since '95, but it isn't going to happen overnight.
For every CTO that holds off a little longer based on Ellisons words the cash registers may ring one more time.
Key-value storage engines combined with cloud facilities go right at the heart of Oracles core business. What else is he supposed to say ?
Key-value storage engines combined with cloud facilities go right at the heart of Oracles core business.
Really? It seems to me that key-value systems are more of a problem for MySQL databases than Oracle ones. Pop quiz: how many people implementing key-value storage ever seriously considered buying an Oracle database?
I'm guessing very few.
I think what Ellison is saying is that cloud computing is nothing new. It's just a new name for distributed computing and we've had that for years. In fact, if you go back far enough we had SaaS on time-sharing systems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing
They haven't considered buying an Oracle database when they're small, but when they grow now they don't have to either.
And bigger players are looking at switching from their expensive-software-on-big-iron to the cloud as well, and as a consequence will evaluate key-value storage systems vs rdbms, and some of them will switch.
What I'm arguing is that the trade off is key-value vs. MySQL for small companies. They pick their path at that point. If you go with RDBMS then you might end up at Oracle at some point. If you go with key-value then I guess you stay there.
If you've gone with key-value it's because you've decided that you don't need RDBMS features.
I'm just wondering about those cases where lots of data is stored in RDBMS which could have been stored in key-value storage engines as well. And with the increased query capabilities of k-v engines the no-mans-land is getting thinner.
The incentive to switch is equal to the license fee - the cost of the switch.
And possibly the convenience of being able to use cheap non-specialist hardware.
For the majority of the companies out there the cloud is still more expensive (and more risky, and privacy sensitive) than storing it on their own infrastructure.
But there are solutions in that space as well, having your own on-site 'private cloud', using all of the infrastructural tricks of cloud computing without the loss of control or the service premium.
For many big businesses I think that makes good sense.
Oracle has very reasonable license terms for virtualization. It's a gold mine for them.
When you license a host CPU, you can run as many oracle instances on as many VMs as you like. Oracle likes it that way: people spinning up "free" VMs for small projects drives demand.
The cloud is a real game changer, even though we are still working out exactly what it will do for us and how to deal with lots of issues (privacy, responsibility, reliability) it's got the established software businesses that came to power in the 80's and 90's quaking in their boots.
This will change the landscape of computing more than anything since '95, but it isn't going to happen overnight.
For every CTO that holds off a little longer based on Ellisons words the cash registers may ring one more time.
Key-value storage engines combined with cloud facilities go right at the heart of Oracles core business. What else is he supposed to say ?