(Chinese Version)

The cooperation of Oracle and Tencent Cloud is a crucial progress in Larry Ellison’s blueprint for the future.

In 2016, international public cloud giants have found their way into the Chinese market.

Before this event, Microsoft and IBM have already teamed up with 21VIANET to introduce their public cloud service to China. In early August this year, AWS and SINNER jointly set up AWS public cloud service in Beijing. Fast forward to September 20th at the 2016 Oracle OpenWorld, Oracle announced to have signed agreement with Tencent Cloud.

Thomas Kuria, president of Oracle product development, stated that the cooperation with Tencent Cloud will include software-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service and infrastructure-as-a-service products based on, but not identical to, existing Oracle technology. Roger Li, managing director of Oracle China, was also at the 2016 Oracle OpenWorld, who stated that Oracle and Tencent Cloud are preparing the machine room, equipment, and staff, as well as to select the proper location for the base for the cooperation. We can expect that Oracle Cloud will provide service in China through Tencent cloud in the near future.

Similar to AWS’s cooperation with SINNET and Microsoft’s cooperation with 21VIANET, Oracle will provide the technology that powers Oracle data centers, while Tencent Cloud will be in charge of providing service for consumers.

Details about the cooperation will be released on the Oracle Cloud Computing Conference Shanghai on November 9th, said Roger Li. However, many details can already be found from the fact that the cloud service Tencent will provide for the public is in sync with Oracle’s global public cloud technology, stressed Roger Li in an interview with TMTpost.

Oracle’s second generation IaaS data centers mainly provide Oracle Bare Metal Cloud service, which is the core product of Oracle. This service is empowered mainly by advanced computing servers and storage servers.

The computing server used for this service is Intel X5, equipped with 36 computing cores, 512GB D-RAM, and 28.8TB SSD hard drive, priced at $5.4 per service hour. In contrast to AWS, which uses server with 16 computing cores, 244GB D-RAM, and 6.4TB SSD hard drive, valued at $6.82 per service hour, Oracle’s IaaS has higher performance and is 20% cheaper.

Furthermore, a Oracle IaaS data center region consists of three Available Domains(AD) independent from each other. Each AD is connected to high bandwidth with very low delay, which powers a usable data center infrastructure.

This fundamental infrastructure is capable of running key computing task. To be specific, the bandwidth between the serves in the ADs is 10Gb/s while the delay is lower than 100 micro-seconds. Within the same region, the bandwidth between ADs is 1Tb/s and the delay is lower than 5 milliseconds, while the bandwidth among regions is 100 Gb/s and the delay is 100 milliseconds.

Thirdly, as a high-performance fundamental infrastructure, Oracle Bare Metal Cloud is a highly secured and completely digital design that provides computing, storage and network service for the public. Oracle Bare Metal Cloud will also offer features such as Oracle Ravello cloud service, Oracle storage cloud service etc. It’s said that Oracle will transfer its VMware and KVM applications seamlessly to public cloud and boost the capacity of the hybrid cloud.

It should be noted that Oracle Bare Metal Cloud is an optimized system geared for Oracle data bases and PaaS, SaaS and DaaS. Compared with AWS’s support for Oracle’s products, using Oracle’s own cloud platform to run its products obviously has more advantages. Oracle’s data base, middleware and ERP etc. enjoy a fairly large market share among traditional enterprises. The Oracle Bare Metal Cloud will prove to be an excellent extension to Oracle’s ecosystem.

Oracle has been pouring in the cloud computing sector for the last six years. “In the past six years, Oracle has invested a total amount of $2 billion in cloud computing development,” Oracle Global’s CEO Mark Hurd said. “In 2016 the investment has hit $5.2 billion. Oracle has over ten thousand engineers working on innovations on cloud computing products and technologies. Oracle’s investment in the R&D of cloud computing ensures that we would have an edge in this industry.”

Pan Jiejun, general manager of Oracle China Software Business and vice president of Oracle, introduced that Oracle and Tencent Cloud’s cooperation won’t be limited to data bases, but also deep collaboration that involves Tencent’s social-networking platform. “This includes connectivity to WeChat and QQ in technologies. We aim to enhance Oracle’s strength in mobility, social-networking and big data,” he said. “Oracle Global is planning to define the future user experience, hoping to achieve a standard channel of video, text, voice messages, files and phone calls. And this experience and the technologies involved are what Tencent has.”

Apart from the cooperation on public cloud with Tencent Cloud, Oracle will also roll out Oracle Cloud Machine, or Cloud@Customer, in the Chinese market. Oracle Cloud Machine provides users with one platform from development through production with full workload portability, rapid application development across public and private clouds with no rewrite, and fully secure and compliant data, all at flexible subscription pricing. At present there Infrastructure Cloud Machine@Customer, Exadata Cloud Machine@Customer and Big Data Cloud Machine@Customer.

Oracle’s vice president and general manager of Oracle China’s Technology Product Wu Chengyang stated that these three products serve as a small private cloud data center, which is like getting a public cloud inside an enterprise. It enables the enterprise to become familiar with the public cloud environment and public cloud application development. “That’s the ideal approach for the enterprise to enter the public cloud realm,” he said.

Wu Chengyang stressed that Oracle’s cloud technologies on public cloud, private cloud and hybrid cloud share the same framework, and that guarantee the company’s enterprise application product can have the maximum capacity for extension, mobility and portability. Besides that, Oracle also provides vast amount of cloud tools, including data analysis tools, data visualization tools, machine learning tools, mobile and ID verification, management and integration tools etc., making it easier for developers and users to use them. The Oracle cloud management tool in particular allows uses to manage Oracle and non-Oracle technology environments.

Oracle is no doubt a later comer in the cloud computing sector. But after Oracle OpenWorld launched its all-fronts cloud computing product in 2015, Oracle’s cloud computing business started to take off due to its founder Larry Ellison’s execution ability and pragmatic thinking.

Although it’s known to all in the industry that IaaS business doesn’t really generate profit, it is still the portal to upper cloud services and the point where companies can reach a mass amount of clients. Therefore, Larry Ellison is willing to compete with AWS in a pricing war. That’s also why Oracle would sign an agreement with Tencent cloud in just one short year after the initial negotiation.

As Oracle further cooperates with Tencent Cloud on IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, there’s no doubt that local Chinese cloud computing providers, especiall Aliyun, will face more challenges in the future.

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[The article is published and edited with authorization from the author @Wu Ningchuan, please note source and hyperlink when reproduce.]

Translated by Garrett Lee (Senior Translator at PAGE TO PAGE), working for TMTpost.