Datacenter Trends
Oracle Plans Major Cloud Datacenter Push
This is one of Oracle's most ambitious infrastructure projects to date, but is it too late to unseat leaders AWS, Microsoft and Google?
Oracle announced plans this week to build 12 new cloud-based datacenters across Asia, Europe and the Americas in a move widely seen as a direct challenge to current cloud-infrastructure leaders Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google and Microsoft.
The company's expansion plan comprises new locations in Asia, including China, India, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and South Korea; Europe, including Amsterdam and Switzerland; and North America, including two in Canada and two new U.S. locations to support U.S. Department of Defense workloads.
As one of Oracle's largest infrastructure-building projects, this expansion plan would quadruple the current total of three cloud datacenters the company operates.
Oracle announced its plan on Monday at the Oracle CloudWorld event New York. "The future of IT is autonomous," said Oracle CEO Mark Hurd in a statement. "With our expanded, modern datacenters, Oracle is uniquely suited to deliver the most autonomous technologies in the world. As we invest, our margins will continue to expand. And with our global datacenter expansion, we are able to help customers lower IT costs, mitigate risks and compete like they never have before."
Tim Beerman, CTO of Ensono, an Illinois-based hybrid IT services provider, sees Oracle's announcement as "a bold move" necessary to establish itself as a "fourth contender" in a market currently dominated by three players. "Succeeding and [leading] in the public cloud requires a significant commitment," he said in an e-mail, "so Oracle will need to participate fully and invest; these new datacenters lay the foundation for that. Only time will tell whether or not this move is enough to gain momentum in the uber-competitive cloud market."
AWS commands a huge lead in the cloud infrastructure market with a 44 percent share, according to analyst firm Gartner. Its closest competitor, Microsoft, currently accounts for a mere 7.1 percent.
Rob Enderle, president of technology research firm The Enderle Group, sees Oracle's announcement as less a bold move and more sleight of hand.
"This is mostly smoke and mirrors, because they haven't even really started building the needed datacenters yet," Enderle said. "What Oracle is doing is trying to raise consideration and stall the market, at least with their customers, until they can get something built and implemented. They realized way too late that if Microsoft and IBM in particular capture these customers on Azure or SoftLayer, those firms have a far stronger competitive migration argument to get those customers off Oracle entirely. Oracle is working desperately to make sure that this doesn't happen, but they likely started about four years too late."
About the Author
John K. Waters is the editor in chief of a number of Converge360.com sites, with a focus on high-end development, AI and future tech. He's been writing about cutting-edge technologies and culture of Silicon Valley for more than two decades, and he's written more than a dozen books. He also co-scripted the documentary film Silicon Valley: A 100 Year Renaissance, which aired on PBS. He can be reached at [email protected].