Last week at Oracle OpenWorld, Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison announced dramatic growth in Oracle’s Gen 2 Cloud Infrastructure. With more than 40,000 Oracle Cloud Infrastructure customers worldwide and an aggressive global expansion, Oracle is solidifying its standing as a leading hyperscale cloud provider. In his keynote, Ellison said the company will be launching 20 new Oracle Cloud regions in 2020, bringing the total to 36 regions worldwide.
This geographic expansion was in addition to new features and services announced for Oracle Cloud, including: a new VMware partnership, security services such as Maximum Security Zones, Cloud Guard and Data Safe, Autonomous Linux, and flexible models for compute instances and storage, along with a host of new cloud data services. And to support growing customer demand in the public sector, Oracle announced that Oracle Cloud Infrastructure has achieved FedRAMP Authorization. This will enable U.S. Government customers to the power of Oracle Cloud to unlock innovation, improve mission performance and enhance service delivery.[i]
Oracle’s expansion also brings Oracle Cloud solutions to more of its global customer base, including the Oracle Autonomous Database, which is available exclusively in the Oracle Cloud. According to Ellison, “We expect to add more than 1,000 new Autonomous Database customers this quarter alone, and it’s accelerating.” Oracle also announced the Exadata Database Machine X8M, a new model in the X8 generation of Exadata systems. The X8M combines new memory and networking technologies to dramatically increase performance, creating new opportunities for its deployment in hybrid cloud architectures.
Placing Exadata databases next to cloud providers in a cloud adjacent architecture provides businesses with the best of both worlds – the reliability and security of on-premises IT with the elasticity of cloud. Equinix and Oracle offer a joint cloud adjacency solution for Exadata Database customers on Platform Equinix® that enables enterprises to interconnect securely to cloud and IT providers, as well as other business partners with low latency and high performance. It also lowers networking costs by avoiding MPLS networks and extended dedicated circuits. Additionally, cloud adjacency offers a bridge for enterprises just starting their journey to cloud. Databases and mission critical applications can be incrementally moved to the cloud when they are ready without affecting system performance or integration dependencies. Or businesses can maintain a hybrid cloud and on-premises database infrastructure via cloud adjacency based on workload and security requirements.
We expect to add more than 1,000 new Autonomous Database customers, this quarter alone, and it’s accelerating.Larry Ellison, Chairman and CTO of Oracle, speaking at Oracle OpenWorld 2019
Expansion of our global FastConnect partnership
Equinix’s global footprint makes it a great partner to support Oracle in its worldwide expansion. As a Platinum-level member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork, Equinix just announced that we now offer access to Oracle Cloud via Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) FastConnect with Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric™ (ECX Fabric™) in 38 metros across five continents, more than any other data center provider. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure FastConnect is directly deployed in six Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers, including those in Amsterdam, Chicago, Frankfurt, London, Sydney and Washington, D.C./Northern Virginia. Additionally, Equinix offers interconnection to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure FastConnect via ECX Fabric in 32 other metros globally. Chief drivers for the expansion include improving user performance by reducing distance (designing for physics), meeting customers’ data residency requirements and strong enterprise demand for migrating Oracle workloads to Oracle Cloud.
Hybrid multicloud is here to stay
Most enterprises today are employing hybrid and multicloud strategy to achieve greater business agility. However, striking the right balance between the performance and control of on-premises IT infrastructure versus the elasticity and affordability of cloud can be a challenge. Having applications and data deployed into multiple clouds can introduce other challenges as well such as inconsistent performance, increased complexity and security concerns. Equinix and Oracle are helping organizations solve these challenges by providing them with direct and secure interconnection between their on-premises and Oracle Cloud environments by leveraging Oracle Cloud Infrastructure FastConnect via ECX Fabric, as well as to other clouds and networks across the globe.ECX Fabric is a software-defined interconnection solution that connects multiple cloud platforms over high-speed, low-latency virtualized connections on Platform Equinix®. OCI FastConnect with ECX Fabric enables businesses to connect a database or application tier on any cloud to a database or application tier in Oracle Cloud on demand.
Common use cases include:
1. Migrating on-premises enterprise applications to Oracle cloud: In our Oracle OpenWorld panel discussion on enabling enterprise migration of JD Edwards to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, U.S. Silica Holdings, Inc., a leading producer of industrial minerals, explained how it wanted to modernize its on-premises JD Edwards enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform. The firm set out to upgrade and move its ERP and Oracle database systems to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to enhance the performance, scalability and resiliency of its internal business processes and operations. Its system integrator BIAS, in partnership with Equinix and managed service provider Datatility, created a high-performance, secure and interconnected multi-region cloud infrastructure leveraging Platform Equinix. As a result, U.S. Silica gained a 10x improvement in monthly financial reporting runtimes (now completing in minutes instead of hours), increased agility and scalability, and reduced CAPEX and annual costs. One U.S. Silica super user commented, “The new JD Edwards platform is lightning fast
When we made the critical decision to upgrade our ERP and migrate it to the cloud, we knew we needed the right partners in place to succeed. With Oracle Cloud Infrastructure FastConnect through ECX Fabric, we were able to bring applications and services closer to our users, implement a robust DR solution, increase agility, and enhance security and reliability.Mohammed Shareef, Director, IT Applications and Enterprise Architecture, U.S. Silica
2. Autonomous database (data warehouse and online transaction processing): Oracle Autonomous Database is optimized for data warehousing (DW) and online transaction processing (OLTP) workloads. Both DW and OLTP use cases require ultra-low latency, high throughput or both. As we demonstrated in our Oracle OpenWorld session on enhancing the performance of Autonomous Database, this is easily achieved with OCI FastConnect and ECX Fabric as it provides a secure, dedicated, low-latency connection that does not traverse the public internet.
Customers with applications on major cloud platforms can tap into Oracle Autonomous Database by leveraging the recently launched Network Edge services from Equinix. Network Edge enables organizations to select, configure and connect virtual network services from industry-leading vendors, enabling them to provision private, secure connectivity between cloud service providers (CSPs) and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure in minutes. This allows applications on other cloud platforms to call on the Autonomous Database in Oracle Cloud. With the high capacity bandwidth available on ECX Fabric, customers can also migrate large amounts of data from multiple CSPs to their Autonomous Data Warehouse, or as part of a broader strategy to migrate all data and applications to Oracle Cloud. By working with Equinix Global Solutions Architects, our customers can leverage their expertise in network latency, benchmarking and topologies to design the optimal multicloud architecture that takes advantage of Oracle Autonomous Database.
3. Building a faster path to the cloud for Oracle Database workloads: An enterprise was challenged by a corporate mandate to exit its data centers and move all its workloads to the cloud. However, its existing CSP could not support the company’s critical Oracle database workloads due to a number of technical and cost reasons. The firm also required low, single-digits milliseconds (ms) of latency when connecting to CSPs and other partners. The company established a presence in an Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data center and created a cloud adjacent infrastructure for its Exadata Database systems that interconnected to Oracle Cloud and other CSPs via OCI FastConnect and ECX Fabric. The new deployment exceeded the firms’ requirements for performance, latency, security and availability. It was able to succeed in migrating core operational applications to the public cloud while optimizing its database performance and cost.
Connect to Oracle Cloud from five continents
With more Oracle Cloud Infrastructure FastConnect locations than any other provider, Equinix can help enterprises around the world easily and privately connect to Oracle Cloud on Platform Equinix.
Learn more about the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure FastConnect expansion in Equinix.
You may also be interested in reading the following:
Cloud Adjacent Oracle Databases on Platform Equinix
HAVI Creates a Disaster Recovery Environment with Equinix and Oracle case study
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