Welcome to the Cloud Wars Minute — your daily cloud news and commentary show. Each episode provides insights and perspectives around the “reimagination machine” that is the cloud.
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In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I give my insights on the latest development in Microsoft and Oracle’s partnership and what it means for customers and other cloud companies.
Highlights
00:14 — Larry Ellison and Satya Nadella from Oracle and Microsoft got together. At the heart of this meeting was the announcement of the Oracle Database at Azure. They’ve physically co-located the Oracle hardware and software within the Azure data centers to allow customers who use both companies’ technologies to have easier access. It’s a huge technological achievement.
01:04 — If you’re a business person today with tech vendors saying “You should spend more money with me,” the first question you’ll ask is, “Will you make my life as a customer easier by cooperating and collaborating in new ways with your competitors, instead of making me the customer clean up the mess that you create by being so competitive?”
01:53 — Customers, Ellison said, are very pleased to see two companies that have been seen as competitors begin to cooperate for customer benefit. That competitive part between Oracle and Microsoft is absolutely true. They compete for everything from cloud infrastructure to applications to databases, to analytics, security, and more.
02:41 — But, Nadella said that they really went out and listened to customers, and customers said we want you to take this to a new level here, in the work with Microsoft.
03:48 — At the meeting, Ellison said this was the first time he had been to Microsoft headquarters. He said he came to this rather late in his career. While they were joking, this is a momentous occasion, which will have far-reaching implications across the industry.
04:19 — Their competitors are going to have to plan for this. What Ellison and Nadella have done is to say not only will we not put you as customers at a disadvantage, but we will bring great new value to you and help you drive new unprecedented levels of business outcomes.
