“It took, by Larry Ellison’s own admission, ‘almost seven years of relentless engineering and innovation plus key strategic acquisitions,’ but today the Oracle CEO was able to make the announcement that the database giant would be entering the public cloud sector with Oracle Cloud. So far, the crowd has yet to go wild.”
The fact of the matter is that many of the larger technology players sat on the sidelines, waiting for the right time to move into the world of cloud computing. Or, perhaps better put, they hoped cloud computing would go away, but joined the parade when it never did. Oracle is the poster child of those guys. I’ll include HP, SAP, and even Microsoft in that gang as well, but there are a few others.
The trouble with big technology moving into the cloud game is that the larger guys freeze the market on many of the smaller, and more innovative players. Customers dependent upon this technology, such as Oracle and SAP, will wait to see what kind of cloud oozes out of the cracks, and largely ignore the more innovative upstarts. The result is a smaller market for cloud startup, and thus the stifling of innovation.
Moreover, we’ll find that many of the more innovative startups are taken out completely by the big guys. While you would think the big guys would purchase these little guys for the technology, many will be purchased for the people and the marketing spin. The technology will quickly disappear from the market, much to the chagrin of the existing users of that technology who have to scurry around to find a replacement.
For example, once it figured out that it was competing with itself, EMC decided to shut down Atmos, its cloud storage service. I suspect that much of the consolidation will remove innovative technology from the market due to the threat of conflicting channels, or, more likely, the result of internal politics at the larger technology providers.
Unfortunately, there is very little we can do other than demand better from multi-billion dollar technology players out there. However, I would suggest that you don’t wait around for these guys to put forth their cloud computing technology. I suspect that their first generation of public and private clouds won’t drive you to leave AWS, Rackspace, or other already established players.
This also means opening up your minds to smaller companies with good solutions. We have a tendency to take the path of least resistance when it comes to technology. Just because you’ve dealt with the same company for years and years does not mean they are the right company to take you into the cloud.
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