Oracle's Kurian: 'Vast majority' of enterprise customers use hybrid cloud models

SAN FRANCISCO -- One of the biggest messages that Oracle wants to send this year at Oracle OpenWorld is that customers have the flexibility to move between the private and public Oracle Cloud seamlessly.

Oracle's Thomas Kurian, executive vice president of product development, continued to drum in that message of being able to mix and match public and private services during a post-keynote Q&A session on Tuesday morning.

Kurian posited that enterprise customers today want to deploy Oracle software in two different ways. They either want to run Oracle software on-premise with their own datacenters (using the Oracle Private Cloud), or they want Oracle software applications delivered to them via Internet browsers in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model.
Explaining that Redwood Shores, Calif.-based corporation is focused on bringing all of its popular software products to its customers via the public Oracle Cloud, Kurian outlined three components to the Oracle Cloud:

• A common infrastructure with platform services (i.e. Oracle Database)
• A range of SaaS apps for sales and marketing, customer services support, etc.
• A social relationship management set of software products to allow customers that want to use social media both as a mechanism to reach their own customers (i.e. This includes marketing to customers via social media as well as technology to listen to social media to be integrated into enterprise apps so sales people can sell more effectively.)

Reiterating CEO Larry Ellison's presentation on Sunday as well as Oracle president Mark Hurd's comments on Monday, Kurian emphasized that the underlying architecture on the public Oracle Cloud looks exactly the same as a private cloud.

While it might sound redundant after awhile to anyone following Oracle OpenWorld closely, it's an important yet simple message that Oracle is delivering well -- at least initially. We'll have to wait and see if customers truly pick up on it.
What might not be as clear is how Oracle is responding to customers with existing hybrid cloud models. Kurian was asked about Oracle EVP of applications product development Steve Miranda's remark on Monday afternoon that the majority of cloud customers are running hybrid models and how sustainable that might be with the tightening of IT budgets.
Kurian tried to clear up the confusion by defending Miranda's comments, positing that it is a "technical reality" for Oracle and any vendor that the "vast majority" of enterprise customers are running on a hybrid model.
More to the point, he argued further that if you tell customers who want to upgrade to the Oracle Cloud that they'll have to throw away every system they already have, no one will do that.
Thus, Kurian continued that most organizations have lots of enterprise systems running today on their own datacenters and environments as well as the Oracle Cloud.
"That's a significant deployment model, and the reality of where most customers are," Kurian said.

More coverage from Oracle OpenWorld 2012 on ZDNet:

• Oracle's Hurd holds court: A read between the lines
• Oracle's Hurd outlines 'holistic' strategy: Will CIOs bite?
• Oracle expands cloud services; unveils world's 'first' multi-tenant database
• Oracle unveils public cloud partner programs
• Ellison sets sights on an all-Oracle cloud
• Oracle execs point toward integration across select enterprise apps
• Oracle's seven pillars of cloud put SaaS at the core
• Oracle & the enterprise carousel
• Will customers forget vendor lock-in concerns for Oracle?
• Amazon spins up free Oracle database cloud
• Oracle serves up bite-size Exadata system for SMEs
• Oracle OpenWorld 2012: By the numbers