As two of the world’s biggest technology companies Oracle and Amazon continue to strengthen their cloud computing service capabilities, can an ultimate collaboration project between the two conceivable? Undoubtedly, the rivalry has grown fierce over the past couple of years. It is a known fact that Amazon is at the forefront of cloud computing technology and has been outperforming its nearest contenders Microsoft, IBM and Google by significant measures. Nonetheless, the recent technical hiccup in Amazon’s (AMZN) Amazon Web Services (or AWS) platform did shake a number of its clients, especially the ones who completely rely on the public cloud platform for their core operations.
Meanwhile, many of the enterprises are now realising the technological superiority of Hybrid cloud over the conventional cloud platforms. Hybrid cloud computing platform can integrate private cloud, public cloud, on-premises, and third-party services. The arrival of the hybrid cloud has certainly created more windows of opportunity for service providers. Despite Amazon’s dominant position in the market, ruling out other competitors is off the mark. Reportedly, Oracle claims to have a Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) that is highly efficient and more advanced compared to many of the DBaaS offered by other companies. But the bottom line result is still not in favour of Oracle. The company’s expertise in developing and marketing database software and technology, enterprise software and cloud engineered systems have gained it a massive amount of success in recent years. However, the company definitely lacks the thrust to go head to head with Amazon. As data storage continues to become a lucrative market, especially in Asia Pacific and Middle East, it will be interesting to see how these companies approach the future. According to a report by Future Market Insights, the Middle East data storage market will surpass US$ 6.5 billion in revenues by 2025.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is doing all the business while Oracle still seeks for an opportunity. Realising the immense market prospect, Oracle is showing an unconditional interest in cloud computing business of late. Which is perhaps quite obvious, given that the Company plans to ramp up its infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) business as a strategy to counterbalance revenue slump from some of its non-performing units. But the road will definitely not be easy for Oracle as it still has to cover as long distance before it is ready to challenge the likes of AWS in the IaaS space. It is quite evident that the company has been vehemently promoting its cloud platform to attract more business and gain client loyalty. With both Amazon and Oracle planning to dive deeper into cloud computing space, it seems unlikely for the both to agree on collaboration, at least not in the medium term. Hence, the pressure remains on Oracle as it prepares itself to contest with AWS, Google Cloud Platform and Azure.
