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Oracle selling higher-end products as a service makes total sense, and I agree, the subscription model has potential to make them a good deal of money. What I'm

Oracle selling higher-end products as a service makes total sense, and I agree, the subscription model has potential to make them a good deal of money. What I'm getting at, however, is why are they so aggressively taking on Amazon in the IaaS space? That's the part which doesn't make sense on the surface--they show up late and then attempt to compete on price. Since when has Oracle competed on price? The conclusion I come to is that Amazon must be eating away at their customer base. Once a customer starts to move some of their IT into AWS, and it goes well, that puts Oracle on the defensive--not a spot they like to be in. I doubt Oracle really wants to be in the IaaS business just for the sake of IaaS. They want to focus on higher-margin services. The IaaS part must be a defensive move to keep customers away from AWS and within the Oracle ecosystem.

toyg 10y ago
There's another thing that is specific to IaaS: auditability. Part and parcel of Oracle's business model is sending goons to count your servers running this or that appserver, and invariably telling you are not paying enough in licenses. A serious cloud-based architecture that can scale up and down at will (which is what you would deploy on AWS) is fundamentally non-auditable, because it can be scaled down to minimal levels when auditors land. But if you're running on Oracle's servers...
- athrun 10y ago
  Not sure about auditability. If anything, IaaS is more auditable since everything is traceable. Additionally, AWS will provide partner ISVs with detailed reports on how customers used their products over a given billing period. That being said, this transparency might be an issue for Oracle as it limits their usual predatory sales/auditing practices.
heisenbit 10y ago
They are not taking on AWS but they are talking about taking on AWS and to show that they are serious they invest some money. Since they are now a "serious" cloud player with whom one has already ties they get invited to tenders that threaten the status quo.

toyg 10y ago

There's another thing that is specific to IaaS: auditability. Part and parcel of Oracle's business model is sending goons to count your servers running this or that appserver, and invariably telling you are not paying enough in licenses. A serious cloud-based architecture that can scale up and down at will (which is what you would deploy on AWS) is fundamentally non-auditable, because it can be scaled down to minimal levels when auditors land. But if you're running on Oracle's servers...

athrun 10y ago
Not sure about auditability. If anything, IaaS is more auditable since everything is traceable. Additionally, AWS will provide partner ISVs with detailed reports on how customers used their products over a given billing period. That being said, this transparency might be an issue for Oracle as it limits their usual predatory sales/auditing practices.

heisenbit 10y ago

They are not taking on AWS but they are talking about taking on AWS and to show that they are serious they invest some money. Since they are now a "serious" cloud player with whom one has already ties they get invited to tenders that threaten the status quo.