Oracle’s CTO and executive chairman Larry Ellison announced the launch of the company’s latest autonomous database service around transaction processing (ATP) last night – but a recent report around claims by Amazon also caught his eye.

At an event in California, Ellison responded to a story, originally broken by CNBC, which claimed that Amazon was planning to move completely away from Oracle’s databases by 2020.

Responding to an analyst question around customers moving off Oracle on the company’s Q218 earnings call back in December, Ellison said: “Let me tell you who’s not moving off of Oracle – a company you’ve heard of that gave us another $50 million this quarter. That company is Amazon. Our competitors, who have no reason to like us very much, continue to invest in and run their entire business on Oracle.”

Ellison reiterated the $50m price and told attendees of his doubt that Amazon would reach its reported target. “They don’t like being our best reference,” he said. “They think of themselves as a competitor, so it’s kind of embarrassing when Amazon uses Oracle, but they want you to use Aurora and Redshift.”

Aurora and Redshift, of course, are Amazon’s primary database products around relational database and data warehousing respectively. Ellison also took the opportunity to tout Oracle’s greater performance when compared to its rival (below) – 12 times faster than Aurora for its autonomous transaction processing database for pure transaction processing, and more than 100 times faster for a mixed workload.

Oracle’s press materials accompanying the ATP release described it as ‘a major milestone in the company’s autonomous strategy’, and Ellison did not hold back in his praise of a technology he described as ‘revolutionary’ at last year’s OpenWorld.

“This machine learning-based technology not only can optimise itself for queries, for data warehouses and data marts, but it also optimises itself for transactions,” said Ellison. “It can run batch programs, reporting, Internet of Things, simple transactions, complex transactions, and mixed workloads. Between these two systems [for data warehousing and transaction processing], the Oracle autonomous database now handles all of your workloads.”

Another barb at Amazon – and it’s worth noting that Andy Jassy is not averse to firing shots back during his keynote speeches – came when Ellison described Oracle’s autonomous database as ‘truly elastic’. It was truly pay as you go, with automatic provisioning and scaling, adding and deleting servers while running, and being serverless when not running.

“Amazon’s databases can’t do that,” he told the audience. “They can’t dynamically add a server when the system is running, they can’t dynamically add network capacity, they can’t dynamically take a server away when there is not demand and it’s not serverless when it’s idle. [Oracle] is a truly elastic system – you only pay for the infrastructure that you use.”

Ellison added that full autonomy – ‘nothing to learn, nothing to do’ became something of a mantra during the presentation – meant Oracle was “as simple to use as the simplest databases on the planet.”

CloudTech has reached out to AWS for comment and will update this piece accordingly.

Picture credits: Oracle/Screenshot

Public cloud customers need to become clearer on what their responsibility is for securing their data and applications hosted by public cloud providers. I believe there is a misunderstanding on how much responsibility the likes of AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform have for securing their customers. Their platforms are definitely secure and migrating workloads into the cloud can be much more secure than on premise data centers, however organisations do have a responsibility in securing their workloads applications, and operating systems.

Even though every customer’s journey to the cloud is unique, and there are different levels of understanding this model, I hear some very common questions repeatedly. “Why do I need to put my own security in the cloud? I thought it was already secure?” “Why can’t I just move my virtual security appliances in the cloud?” “What does this mean for my network firewall? How do I ensure connectivity and access for my employees?” “How do I secure a cloud application? Aren’t Office 365 and Salesforce already secure?”

If you find yourself asking questions like this, you may want to talk with an experienced partner to help with your migration. Until then, here are some considerations that can help clear things up.

Shared responsibility

The public cloud operates on a shared responsibility model. This means that the cloud providers give you the responsibility and flexibility to secure what you bring to the cloud. Therefore, without question, as a customer your responsibility is to configure, patch and layer security on applications, workloads and operating systems you spin up. Configuration includes identity management, access levels, and security groups. Customers are also responsible for data protection and availability of workloads.

Public cloud providers are only responsible for the physical security, global and regional connectivity, and power and cooling of the data centers that they own.

This model maintains the highest possible efficiencies for the cloud provider, and relieves the customer of the burden of providing the infrastructure such as a data centre or the server hardware that provides scalability on demand.

The model also enables customers to customise their cloud security to meet the needs of their unique workloads. Application and data security are in the hands of the people who know them best, rather than being left to a public cloud provider to provide a cookie cutter protocol.

Public cloud providers work with vendors to ensure that the solutions available will operate properly on their platforms. AWS, Azure, and GCP partnership programs ensure that vendors have access to tools and specifications needed to design their products for optimum performance on each platform. Once the vendor's products have met the standards set by the provider, a certification or competency is awarded. This shows customers that the solution is part of the fabric of the public cloud.

The public cloud fabric

When we talk about the public cloud fabric, we are talking about native integration into the platform. Consider this: the model for shared security means that the cloud provider owns the infrastructure for security. All aspects to visibility, monitoring, remediation, and protection, are all substantiated in the public cloud through APIs and tools like CloudWatch and Insights. These are the things that constitute the fabric of the public cloud.

Native integration into a cloud platform requires that a solution be built on a cloud-centric architecture and engineered specifically for that public cloud. While it may be tempting to use a virtualised version of your on-premises security in the cloud, these VMs simply aren't designed to take advantage of what you're buying.

They may seem to work, but they lack certain functionality. Some common questions I hear are: can the VM auto-scale for performance and capacity? Can it be provisioned and deployed within minutes, on either AWS or Azure? Does it offer pay as you go, metered billing, and other flexible consumption models? Is it built on a cloud-centric architecture?

These are the features that will distinguish an on-premises solution from a 'cloud ready' solution. To take full advantage of what the cloud has to offer, you will need to have a solution that is part of the cloud fabric.

The numbers don’t lie

My belief that many organisations misunderstand this shared responsibility model is supported by recent research of the public cloud customer market. In a recent study conducted by research firm Vanson Bourne, Public Cloud – Benefits, Strategies, Challenges, and Solutions, 77 percent of organisations reported the belief that public cloud providers are responsible for securing customer data in the cloud. 68 percent of decision makers are under the impression that cloud providers are responsible for securing customer applications as well. More concerning in this study is that a nearly a third (30 percent) of organisations have not added additional security layers to their public cloud deployments.

More secure than on premise

Many organisations realise that their cloud deployments can be inherently more secure than on premise deployments because cloud providers are collectively investing more into security controls than they could on their own. However, the organisations benefiting the most from public cloud are those that understand that their public cloud provider is not responsible for securing data or applications and are augmenting security with support from third party vendors.

Google has announced its support for NVIDIA’s Tesla P4 GPUs to help customers with graphics-intensive and machine learning applications.

The Tesla P4, according to NVIDIA’s data sheet, is ‘purpose-built to boost efficiency for scale-out servers running deep learning workloads, enabling smart responsive AI-based services.’ The P4, which is run on NVIDIA’s Pascal architecture, has a GPU memory of 8GB, and memory bandwidth of 192 GB per second.

While not at the same performance level as the V100, run on Volta instead of Pascal architecture, Google said the P4 accelerators, which are now in beta, represent a ‘good balance of price/performance for remote display applications and real-time machine learning inference.’

“Graphics-intensive applications that run in the cloud benefit greatly from workstation-class GPUs,” wrote Ari Liberman, Google Cloud product manager in a blog post. “We now support virtual workstations with NVIDIA GRID on the P4 and P100, allowing you to turn any instance with one or more GPUs into a high-end workstation optimised for graphics-accelerated use cases.

“Now, artists, architects and engineers can create breathtaking 3D scenes for their next blockbuster film, or design a computer-aided photorealistic composition,” Liberman added.

As is often the case with these announcements, a brand new, shiny customer was rolled out to explain how Google’s services had improved their operations. Except this one wasn’t quite as new; regular readers of this publication may remember oilfield services provider Schlumberger from Google’s GPU price reduction news back in November. The company said it was using Google’s workstations, powered by NVIDIA GPUs, to help visualise oil and gas scenarios for its customers.

The link with machine learning capabilities is again an irresistible one, with Google saying the P4 is ideal for use cases such as visual search, interactive speech, and video recommendations.

Whither NVIDIA, however? The big cloud providers are certainly a key opportunity for the graphics processor. Speaking at the end of last year, the company said its V100 GPU had been chosen by every major cloud firm, saying the applications for GPU servers had ‘now grown to many markets.’

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The largest players in cloud computing are looking to Asia for further expansion – Google has announced it is building a new data centre in Singapore, while Alibaba Cloud has announced a second infrastructure zone in Malaysia.

Google’s expansion will take the company up to three data centres in Singapore, taking its overall investment in the country to $850 million. The facilities will also be built in line with Google’s environmental policy; back in April the company announced it had achieved its long-standing goal of becoming 100% renewable.

According to Google’s location map, the company now operates 61 open and provisional zones across 20 regions and five continents. Singapore is joined in Asia Pacific by Japan – an open facility in Tokyo and a future region in Osaka – Mumbai, Taiwan, Sydney, and another future facility in Hong Kong. “We’re looking forward to growing our small team at the data centres here, as well as expanding our ties with the local community,” wrote Joe Kava, VP data centres in a blog post.

Alibaba, meanwhile, is launching a second availability zone in Malaysia to expand its cloud footprint in the country. Among the new products to arrive are DDoS protection, as well as elastic computing, database, networking and monitoring services. In line with Alibaba’s recent partnership with SAP, the zone will also be certified for SAP hosting.

“The success of our trade on a global platform with assistance of companies like Alibaba Cloud depends on an efficient Internet environment,” said Gobind Singh Deo, Malaysia minister of communications and multimedia. “The advanced technology afforded by Alibaba Cloud opens new opportunities, which I believe will quite substantially benefit Malaysia in its efforts to raise competition and efficiency in this new industry.”

There is a major audience for cloud technologies in Southeast Asia – indeed, Google said that in three years more than 70 million people had gotten online for the first time. This has been reflected in recent industry research into the area.

According to the most recent study from the Asia Cloud Computing Association (ACCA), out of 14 Asia Pacific countries, Singapore was considered the most ‘cloud ready’. The country was praised for its broadband quality, cybersecurity and levels of business sophistication. Malaysia was ranked at #8, noting the government’s cloud-first strategy as a potential indicator of future success.

Here’s a good example of how security underlines – or should underline – pretty much everything in the cloud: Cisco has announced it is to acquire Michigan-based Duo Security for upwards of $2.3 billion (£1.8bn).

The deal, which expects to close during the first quarter of Cisco’s fiscal year 2019, aims to help give the networking giant’s customers straightforward and secure access to any application on any networked device through Duo’s platform.

Duo Security offers a trusted access platform with two-factor, multi-factor and zero trust authentication. The platform verifies the identity of users by checking the health of their device before granting access to company applications.

In a letter to employees, Duo CEO Dug Song cited the traditional reasons why the acquisition made sense – deploying the technology at scale, gaining Cisco’s long-standing enterprise security experience, as well as a nice payoff for shareholders. “This is an important next chapter for Duo and there is much more we can accomplish together to position Cisco for enduring success,” wrote Song. “I am incredibly proud of the company we have built and look forward to our future with our friends at Cisco.”

Song also noted the importance of Cisco’s recent security-based acquisitions – such as OpenDNS, Sourcefire and Cloudlock – and how they were integrated into the wider business. “They are a company evolving themselves under new leadership, new momentum, and a new focus on innovation in the cloud era,” Song added. “Cisco views our leadership in zero trust security as transformational to their business, bringing cloud-based user and device trustworthiness to an already impressive security product portfolio.”

From Cisco’s perspective, the continued prevalence of multi-cloud initiatives was key to the acquisition. “IT teams are responsible for protecting hundreds of different perimeters that span anywhere a user makes an access decision,” said David Goeckeler, EVP and general manager of networking and security at Cisco. “Duo’s zero trust authentication and access products integrated with our network, device and cloud security platforms will enable our customers to address the complexity and challenges that stem from multi- and hybrid cloud environments.”

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