Today in joint statements both Microsoft and Oracle issued their new found marriage in the clouds.
The deal gives Microsoft clear competitive advantages against two of its competition. It strengthens Hyper-V against VMSphere as Oracle software is only supported on OracleVM and Hyper-V as from today. It also gives Windows Azure sure footing against Amazon AWS Web in the war for cloud supremacy, as the fully licensed support covers all Oracle software (customers can bring their own licenses), and pay-per-use licenses will be resold by Microsoft for Weblogic, Linux, and the Oracle database.
In summary, the partnership encompasses:
- Oracle customers can run supported Oracle software on Windows Server Hyper-V and in Windows Azure.
- Oracle provides license mobility for customers who want to run Oracle software on Windows Azure.
- Microsoft will add Infrastructure Services instances with popular configurations of Oracle software including Java, Oracle Database, and Oracle WebLogic Server to the Windows Azure image gallery.
- Microsoft will offer fully licensed and supported Java in Windows Azure.
- Oracle will offer Oracle Linux, with a variety of Oracle software, as preconfigured instances on Windows Azure.
“Now our customers will be able to take advantage of the flexibility our unique hybrid cloud solutions offer for their Oracle applications, middleware and databases, just like they have been able to do on Windows Server for years.” – Steve Ballmer
Ellison and Ballmer are clearly committed and aggressive in their move to tackle a growing trend for Cloud services. But as Ellison once said in an interview with Ed Zander, “…all it is is a computer attached to a network…”