News

Oracle's Public Cloud Launch Set for June 6

• By Jeffrey Schwartz
• May 31, 2012

Oracle announced it will release its public cloud platform as a service (PaaS) on Wednesday, June 6. CEO Larry Ellison made the announcement at the D: All Things Digital conference in an interview with blogger and editor Kara Swisher.

"We're announcing the general availability of the Oracle Cloud," Ellison said to Swisher. "Platform as a Service. Database Service, Java Service and a bunch of applications. All on top of other acquisitions, like Taleo for talent management."

Ellison described Taleo, a company Oracle acquired earlier this year for $1.9 billion, as a complex cloud-based ERP and HR suite that run on Oracle hardware in their own Oracle virtual machines. Around the same time, the company also acquired RightNow, a cloud-based provider of customer service apps, for $1.5 billion.

Oracle announced Oracle Public Cloud at its OpenWorld conference back in October. The company said the suite of services were built to run Oracle applications, middleware and database products as a self-service offering available for both cloud and premises-based deployment.

The company's cloud portfolio is divided into two service categories: applications and platforms. Application Services consists of Fusion CRM, Fusion HCM (human capital management) and a Social Network, an offering that provides secure collaboration using social networking concepts. Platform Services is divided among offering Java-based infrastructure and database hosting.

Ellison pointed out that Oracle Cloud will take a different approach to cloud computing than other offerings, according to The Wall Street Journal (subscription required). Rather than building Oracle Cloud on a multi-tenant architecture where multiple instances run on the same hardware, the company is emphasizing its VMs, which Ellison argues gives customers more control over upgrades.