Apps, social, platform: Oracle aims for planet Earth's broadest cloud
The company's new cloud strategy takes in platform-as-a-service, on-demand applications and social networking tools for the enterprise, as it strives for the 'most comprehensive cloud on the planet Earth'
Former cloud sceptic Oracle has taken the wraps off a new unified cloud strategy.
The strategy update, unveiled on Wednesday, launched a suite of platform-as-a-service offerings for enterprise developers along with hosted versions of Oracle's apps and a
newly defined suite of 'cloud social services' for businesses.
"We are now announcing the most comprehensive cloud on the planet
Earth," Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison said in a statement.
"Most cloud vendors only have niche assets. They don't have platforms
to extend."
The platform-as-a-service element of the strategy offers developers a platform on which to
build apps using the Oracle Database and WebLogic-based Java
services. Developers can also use the platform for building web apps
with PHP, Ruby and Python, and native or HTML5-based mobile apps.
Oracle's unified cloud strategy also includes document services for creating
online workspaces and portals for collaboration, website management
tools and analytics services.
The company's own range of enterprise applications, which it will host in cloud form on its infrastructure, spans business
intelligence, social and mobile tools. The integrated package on offer
will take in ERP, recruitment, lifecycle management, sales, marketing
and customer service applications.
We are now announcing the most comprehensive cloud on the planet Earth.
– Larry Ellison, Oracle
The 'social services' platform is aimed at two things, namely
letting businesses interact with their customers through public social
networks, and providing businesses with internal social networks. The
secure internal tool is simply called 'Social Network', and the new
Social Data Services aggregate data from both public social networks
and enterprise data sources.
There are also two other toolsets targeting marketing departments:
Social Marketing and Engagement Services for publishing, managing and
reporting on social marketing campaigns; and Social Intelligence
Services for analysing social media interactions.
Oracle Cloud's infrastructure is based on the company's Exalogic
and Exadata
systems, and operates on a self-service basis.