甲骨文公司发生了什么？

在冠状病毒危机期间，甲骨文似乎正在经历一种复苏。金融分析师对其即使在困难时期仍能支付股息的能力表示赞赏。它的技术一直很好，现在也出现了有趣的增长，这一切都在改善公司的形象，是的，他们有好的技术，但他们相当保护自己的品牌，或者说许多云计算公司使用他们的技术来巩固他们的产品，但是他们在其他方面是云计算的落后者。这一切突然成为古老的历史，因为该公司在多个领域都达到临界质量：其自主数据库和自主Linux产品，其云基础架构业务，它依赖于 Oracle 硬件，并且正在快速构建，及其改进后的云应用集。这一切至少在一个不太可能的地方得到了体现——视频会议。这是一个月内第二次，第一次是与Zoom，现在是与8x8, Inc.，该公司正在吹嘘其强大的能力，托管数百万用户，并为视频会议应用程序推送pb级的数据。部分由于冠状病毒的威胁，视频正迅速成为一种便捷的应用——也就是说，如果你想运行，你就能使用我的软件——而甲骨文公司从不害羞于向它的客户推广。

瘦身

目前的公告详细说明了8x8如何将其视频会议服务从AWS转移到Oracle，以获得每个节点25%的性能提升。目前的应用据说支持全球每月2000万活跃用户，这比Zoom宣传的数字要小得多，后者也使用了Aws等其他架构。从甲骨文的优势来看，这些视频会议供应商之所以选择甲骨文的精髓在于它具有快速部署的能力，能够为数百万用户扩展规模，并能将他们的数据推送到pb级。甲骨文声称，其解决方案节省了80%以上的网络出站成本，每天出站的网络流量超过1.5 petabytes，而且还在日益增加。

8x8的首席执行官维克·维尔马说:”我们非常自豪能够帮助企业、组织、教育工作者和卫生专业人员在这一具有挑战性的时期保持联系。”，随着全球对我们视频会议平台的需求呈指数级增长，我们需要一个合作伙伴，以快速扩大规模。降低成本背后的故事是，甲骨文多年来一直强调与竞争对手相比，它在价格性能上有优势。一些客户已经接受了这种逻辑，但许多其他客户仍然把至少一部分数据放在了其他云上，以防万一。这使得像AWS这样的竞争对手可以抢占一些知名品牌、较小的应用程序和大量沙箱业务。然而，去年当查看来自芝加哥G2的数据时，数据显示Oracle的平均实现是AWS平均实现的10倍，不知道今天的G2数据揭示了什么。本周的公告，以及最近的Zoom公告，显示了巨大的可伸缩性和市场速度，它还提供了一个重要的结论。

我的猜想

Oracle已经存在足够长的时间，它比上世纪80年代出现的baker的12家关系数据库公司都要长久。它引领了一波应用程序开发浪潮，随后又收购了西贝尔等CRM公司和PeopleSoft等其他企业供应商，掀起了一波整合浪潮。当它开始为云计算重新设计工具时，它赶上了整合浪潮，尽管人们普遍认为它为时已晚。不过，与市场相比，这只是晚了一点，而与当时客户想要达到的目标相比而言还不够。当时，甲骨文受到了来自多个方面的挑战——包括Salesforce这样的公司，它推出了更好的捕鼠器，以及亚马逊这样的后起之秀，亚马逊推出了一个虚拟项目，建立了自己的关系数据库。我将其比作空中客车(Airbus)的崛起，这家欧洲财团决定在客机领域挑战波音(Boeing)。如果你有足够的预算，你几乎可以做任何事情，但这有什么意义呢？用这么多钱，欧洲人本可以造出一辆拥有足够欧洲充电设施的电动汽车。我一直不明白在一个巩固的市场中引入另一个RDBMS的逻辑是什么现在，作为一个实际问题，供应商一直在从他们的竞争对手那里挖客户。这是当前科技领域零和经济的趋势。我确信AWS也可以做出类似的声明——就这一点而言，微软也会。最重要的问题是甲骨文的可扩展性和快速部署能力的展示，这将被用在很多宣传材料中，明确地表明甲骨文正在再次崛起。

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Oracle appears to be undergoing a kind of resurgence during the coronavirus crisis. Financial analysts are saying nice things about its ability to pay dividends even in tough times. Its technology, which always has been good, is seeing an interesting uptick.

All of this is buffing the company's image after years of, yes-but responses from the market -- as in yes, they've got good technology, but they're rather litigious about protecting their brand. Or yes, lots of cloud companies use their technology to undergird their offerings, but they're cloud laggards otherwise.

All that is suddenly so much ancient history as the company has hit critical mass in a number of areas: its autonomous database and autonomous Linux offering; its cloud infrastructure business, which is dependent on Oracle hardware and being rapidly built out; and its revamped set of cloud apps.

This is all coming together in at least one unlikely place: video conferencing.

For the second time in a month, first with Zoom and now with 8x8, Inc., the company is touting its brute force ability to host millions of users and push petabytes of data for video conferencing apps.

Due in part to the virus, video rapidly is becoming the show-me application -- as in, if you can run that you can run my stuff -- and Oracle, never shy, is happy to promote its customers.

The Skinny

The current announcement details how 8x8 moved its video meetings services from AWS to Oracle to gain a 25 percent performance boost per node. The current implementation is said to support 20 million monthly active users across the planet. That's a lot smaller than the figures touted by Zoom, which also uses other providers like AWS.

Still, the essence of both stories, from Oracle's vantage point, is that these video conference vendors chose Oracle for its rapid deployment capability and ability to scale for millions of users and push petabytes of their data.

Oracle claimed that its solution saves more than 80 percent in network outbound costs and that it exceeded 1.5 petabytes a day of egress network traffic and was increasing day by day.

‘‘We're incredibly proud to help businesses, organizations, educators and health professionals stay connected during this challenging time,” said Vik Verma, CEO of 8x8. ‘‘As global demand on our video meetings platform grew exponentially, we needed a partner to scale rapidly and cost effectively with us.”

The backstory is that Oracle has been saying for years that it has a price performance advantage against its competition, and while some customers have accepted the logic, many others have put at least part of their data in other clouds, just in case.

That's allowed competition like AWS to scoop up some name brands as well as smaller apps and a lot of sandbox business. However, when I looked at data from G2 in Chicago last year, the numbers indicated the average Oracle implementation was 10x the average AWS implementation. No idea what today's G2 data reveals.

This week's announcement, along with the recent Zoom announcement, shows huge scalability and speed to market. It also provides evidence of a significant takeaway.

My Two Bits

Oracle has been around long enough to have gone in and out of style many times. It outlasted the baker's dozen of relational database companies that emerged in the 1980s. It led a wave of applications development and then a wave of consolidation as it bought up CRM companies like Siebel and other enterprise vendors such as PeopleSoft.It rode the consolidation wave as it began retooling for the cloud, albeit late, as is widely acknowledged. Still, it was only late compared to the market and not compared to where its customers wanted to be at the time, which was on-premises.

At that point, Oracle became challenged from multiple sides -- by companies like Salesforce, which built a better mousetrap, and upstarts like Amazon, which spun up a vanity project to build its own relational database.I liken that to the rise of Airbus, the European consortium that decided to challenge Boeing in passenger aircraft. If you have a big enough budget, you can do almost anything, but what's the point?For all that cash, the Europeans could have built an electric car with a sufficient continental charging infrastructure. I've never understood the logic of introducing another RDBMS into a consolidating market.Now, as a practical matter, vendors are poaching clients from their competition all the time. It's emblematic of the zero-sum economics of this moment in the tech space.

I am sure that AWS can make similar takeaway claims -- and for that matter, so can Microsoft. The most significant issue that I see is the demonstration of Oracle's scalability and rapid deployment capability, which will be used in a lot of promotional materials that state unequivocally that Oracle is on the upswing again.