How has Oracle Cloud differentiated itself on simplicity?

There are two interesting quotes from the Oracle Cloud website that, when boiled down, become all about simplicity:

“Unlike other clouds where discounts are tied to specific service types in specific regions, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure discounts can be applied consistently across all service offerings in all regions”

“Oracle has simple rate structures that eliminate cost surprises associated with hard to estimate usage elements like data egress and storage performance”

The first quote is referring to the consumption model.  If you look at other Clouds, for example, you will find that the consumption model is bound to specific resources.  Consider that if you want to use EC2 (IaaS) in AWS you will choose the type of instance you want, how long you want it for, and then how much you’re willing to pre-pay to drive the discount.  If you want to stop using EC2 and use something else, you have limited and sometimes no flexibility in switching those resources.  That adds an element of complexity into Cloud, but one that Oracle has addressed.

Oracle uses Universal Credit, which at the outset looks like a similar model to resource consumption as you choose the resources and receive an associated monthly cost.  However, here’s the key difference: the amount you pay per-month will drive a discounted Cloud rate across ALL resources, and if you want to switch between resources you can!  What’s more, if you go over your monthly committed amount you don’t switch back to a PAYG rate for the Cloud services; you continue at the discounted rate.  What Oracle have done is focused on simplicity in the consumption model of Cloud – it’s NOT resource based.

The next quote is another great example of simplicity.  Oracle references two usage elements, data egress and storage performance.  Data Egress out of Oracle Cloud is free over Fast Connect and only paid over 10TB per month.  If you’re looking at Cloud costs and trying to work out how much you MAY get charged for data egress, Oracle have eliminated that complexity.  How much time do you want to spend working out data egress – could you even work it out?

Storage performance is another key element; now if you have a SAN and a storage team it may be possible to work out what type of throughput you need to have on your Cloud storage.  In AWS you need to pay to provision that throughput.  The challenge, however, is that most storage arrays are virtualised now, making individual workloads different to measure.  Secondly this may be a possibility for a few environments, but if you’re moving 300 VMs to the Cloud…that might be difficult.  Oracle guarantees storage performance, you don’t pay for different tiers, and you don’t need to work out the throughput.  They’ve made it simple.  Another element which isn’t even mentioned on the quote is load balancers.  All Cloud providers charge you for running a load balancer, but some Cloud providers also charge you for the data that the load balancer processes!  Again, how much time do you want to spend looking at that?

Even for a ‘simple’ Cloud solution, say a hybrid Cloud with a database, application server and load balancer, you would need to calculate: data egress (as it’s Hybrid Cloud); storage throughput requirements (as you’re running a database); and load balancer processing units for the inbound connections.  Or you could just look at Oracle Cloud and not think about any of those elements at all.  That is how Oracle have differentiated on simplicity, and that simplicity will significantly reduce your Cloud migration time and cost.

Interested in learning more about what Oracle could do for you? Check out our page on Oracle Cloud migration, or contact us via the DSP-Explorer website.