It had been previously set up by Larry Ellison – and it did not disappoint when it finally arrived.

Yes, the keynote at OpenWorld promised a lot of heat aimed at Amazon Web Services (AWS) and duly delivered. But there was also the small matter of what is claimed as the world’s first fully autonomous database cloud, powered by Oracle Database 18c.

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before. Two weeks ago, Oracle’s chairman and CTO took to the stage to outline new pricing and licensing models – more of which later. Yet the autonomous database was the recurring theme, as well as focusing on what Amazon couldn’t do. “Our approach to the cloud business is to lower your costs and lower your risks by fully automating all sorts of platform services completely, with completely autonomous software that runs itself, eliminates the cost of human error, and eliminates the opportunity for human error,” said Ellison at the time.

This time, it was more of the same. “This is the most important thing we have done in a long, long time,” he told attendees. “If you eliminate human labour, you eliminate human error.” Discussing the importance of machine learning, Ellison added: “For years and years artificial intelligence did not live up to its promise, but there is a new type of AI…the first branch of artificial intelligence that really, really works.

“I don’t use the words ‘revolutionary new technology’ every year [at OpenWorld]… but this one is.”

18c aims to be self-driving, self-scaling and self-repairing, and offers a guaranteed 99.995% SLA. Here, again Ellison could not resist. “I’ve seen people claim four nines, five nines,” he said. “Read the fine print carefully. They specifically exclude unplanned downtime due to maintenance, unplanned downtime due to software bugs, unplanned downtime due to configuration change, or planned downtime for that matter due to security patches. They basically exclude all reasons you have downtime and then say we’re never down.

“This is everything – planned, unplanned downtime – you are down for less than 30 minutes a year with the autonomous database,” Ellison added.

This was emphasised by a series of benchmark demonstrations featuring various scenarios, such as Oracle’s database on Oracle’s cloud versus Amazon’s cloud. “I’m just going to run 6a and 6b because the Amazon side of the demo takes too long,” said Ellison. On the first, Oracle took 34 seconds and Amazon 255, and the bill came out at $0.04 compared with $0.23 respectively. With all this came the promise – again re-emphasised from previous gatherings – of a bill which was more than half of Amazon’s.

Amazon’s CTO Werner Vogels, writing in a blog post, highlighted the 10th anniversary since the company’s Dynamo whitepaper was unveiled, which aimed to change the database market to produce a horizonally scalable, distributed database that would scale out for reads and writes. Naturally, the desire for change came about because the company was struggling on an Oracle database.

The company did not comment on the claims in Oracle’s presentation when CloudTech enquired, however Business Insider reported that an AWS representative described it as “no facts, wild claims, and lots of bluster.”

One can read only so much into benchmark tests, but Ellison’s mantra remained. “If you want high availability, if you want lower labour costs, higher performance, all that stuff, you’ve got to be willing to pay four cents, not 23,” he concluded.

“Some people like paying 23 [cents] – I just don’t know any.”

Picture credit: Oracle

The rush to move IT applications from on-premises enterprise data centers to public cloud service providers, primarily on the basis of the promise of a low-cost, has once again been challenged by recent market research findings.

In fact, savvy CIOs and CTOs are seeking comprehensive solutions that meet all their expectations, rather than merely a limited subset. Even if it costs more to achieve that goal, the demand for superior hybrid cloud services is gaining momentum across the globe.

As an example, seventy-five percent of respondents to the latest worldwide market study by 451 Research indicate that enterprise IT leaders are willing to pay a premium for enhancements to their server hosting and cloud services.

Cloud services market development

The most desired improvements are guarantees of security (48.7 percent of respondents) and service performance (43.3 percent) with less interest in paying service providers to take on the operational management burden (27.9 percent).

Despite customers citing cost savings as a driver of cloud adoption and using value for money as a metric for evaluating cloud services, 451 Research finds customers are willing to pay extra for cloud and hosting service enhancements. The average premium businesses are willing to pay is around 30 percent.

The highest premium is for enhanced customer service and support (33.3 percent) and the lowest is for the service provider handling operational management (27.9 percent).

Although 451 Research believes higher levels of service will attract those customers willing to pay higher rates, organizations surveyed say that their providers are failing to meet their expectations for service levels in several categories.

As an example, 58.1 percent of survey respondents say that managed services or security services bundled with the infrastructure or application service is an important capability for them. However only 38.8 percent of these respondents say their current vendors meet this expectation.

The largest such gap is the ability to migrate workloads and data from the customer’s data center to the provider’s or another data center, including public cloud. Moreover, 42.9 percent indicate this is important, but only 19.5 percent of these respondents say their current vendors meet this expectation.

Outlook for cloud computing enhancements

«We frequently talk about pricing competition in cloud infrastructure and applications, which leaves many service providers wondering how they can differentiate themselves,» said Liam Eagle, research manager at 451 Research.

According to the 451 Research assessment, the good news is that many hybrid cloud service customers tell the analyst that they’re evaluating vendors on total value, rather than cost. That value can reside in services like guaranteed levels of performance, security and support.

«We’ve found that customers still see shortcomings when it comes to service providers helping them strategize and execute around hosting and cloud,» added Eagle. «Service providers focused on adding value should regard these gaps as opportunities they can capture by improving the quality of their own service in specific areas.»

The dynamic nature of the cloud means that change is a constant when it comes to modern cloud-based infrastructure. Delivering modern applications to end users, therefore, is a constantly shifting challenge. Delivery automation helps IT Ops teams ensure that apps are providing an optimal end user experience over hybrid-cloud and multi-cloud environments, no matter what the current state of the infrastructure is. To employ a delivery automation strategy that reflects your business rules, making real-time decisions based on a combination of real user monitoring, synthetic testing, APM, NGINX / local load balancers, and other data sources, is critical.

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Productivity, customer satisfaction and business success are the three key benefits to cloud communications, according to a new study.

Research from analyst firm IDC, which surveyed 805 mid-sized businesses and enterprises around their communications strategy, found companies who use both unified and contextual cloud communications saw a 47% improvement in speed to market for products and services, 42% improvement in customer satisfaction and loyalty, and a 34% reduction in costs.

As is often the case with research such as this, respondents were put into four buckets depending on their journey. Communications ‘powerbrokers’ are at the top of the tree and sophisticated users. This means they use text and voice messaging to automate delivery of notifications and are much more likely to say their communications are effective as a result. 96% said their frequency and timeless of comms was effective, with 100% saying it for the quality of their customer-facing interactions.

Communications ‘respecters’ have started moving to the cloud and are planning more, while ‘skeptics’ are unsure of its benefits and, at the bottom rung, communications ‘unaware’ have little knowledge about the process. For those in the ‘unaware’ category, only 15% automate text and voice messaging, while even fewer (12%) say their customer-facing communication is effective.

Is this a result of a younger, digitally native workforce aiming to drive through changes? IDC says possibly, but adds a caveat.

“Digital natives may completely disrupt an industry, but companies need to look at this as an opportunity to conduct business and engage customers in new ways,” said Mark Winther, group VP of telecom custom solutions at IDC. “Our data clearly shows that cloud communications enable businesses to quickly adapt and transform and, as a result, not only survive but actually thrive in their respective industries.”

The study was sponsored by Vonage, a cloud communications software provider. You can find an executive summary of the research here.

What is the best strategy for selecting the right offshore company for your business?
In his session at 21st Cloud Expo, Alan Winters, U.S. Head of Business Development at MobiDev, will discuss the things to look for – positive and negative – in evaluating your options. He will also discuss how to maximize productivity with your offshore developers.
Before you start your search, clearly understand your business needs and how that impacts software choices.

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The latest iteration of Kubernetes has launched, with the open source company promising 1.8 will be laser focused on security and sustainability.

The launch – the third of its type this year – offers a variety of new initiatives, from greater support for role based access control (RBAC), to transport layer security (TLS), to promotion for a series of workload APIs.

“Kubernetes 1.8 represents a snapshot of many exciting enhancements and refinements underway,” a company post explained. “In addition to functional improvements, we’re increasing project-wide focus on maturing process, formalising architecture, and strengthening Kubernetes’ governance model.

“The evolution of mature processes clearly signals that sustainability is a driving concern, and helps to ensure that Kubernetes is a viable and thriving project far into the future.”

The note came from four executives; Aparna Sinha, Kubernetes group product manager, Ihor Dvoretskyi, developer advocated for the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), Caleb Miles, technical program manager for CoreOS, and Jaice Singer DuMars, Microsoft Kubernetes ambassador.

It’s safe to say that Kubernetes’ profile has been raised by the latter’s additions to CNCF, the San-Francisco based organisation focused on sustaining containers and microservices architectures. Microsoft signed up in July saying it was ‘another natural step’ on its open source journey, while Oracle signed up in September.

Writing for this publication back in January, Rob Greenwood, technical director at Steamhaus, said now was the time for organisations to take the plunge with Kubernetes.

“The layer of abstraction that Kubernetes provides means we now only need to talk to one technology to gain a higher level of control over everything at a lower level,” he wrote. “It also means we can take a cloud infrastructure built in one cloud environment, such as AWS, and move it into another environment, including Azure or Google Cloud.

“This really is the next generation of cloud, with lots of big name organisations already jumping on the bandwagon and embracing Kubernetes,” he added. “However, this move will not be as simple for everyone. Many companies will need to undergo a major cultural shift before this is possible.”

You can read the full blog post announcing 1.8 here.

Read more: Why Kubernetes promises much for those willing to embrace a cultural shift