As I predicted in this blog, Oracle has found a profitable journey in the cloud over and above its existing open source database offerings. Specifically, Oracle sales increased 37 percent to $8.76 billion last quarter, according to Bloomberg. Oracle credits cloud computing for the revenue jump; indeed, Oracle's databases posted a 29 percent gain in new license sales.
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This is due to the fact that we're hooked on Oracle, we're moving to the cloud, and we're bringing Oracle along for the ride, even though Oracle was late to market with its cloud strategy and the company's real goal is to rebrand its existing products as "cloud." However, as clouds are created for public consumption or within the enterprises, Oracle will find a place at the table now and for some time to come.
Klint Finley over at ReadWriteWeb picked up on this as well, citing my past predictions around the growth of Oracle and the relative lack of interest in open source databases:
Even in cases where NoSQL tools are adopted, traditional databases tend to remain. For example, CERN and CMS adopted Apache CouchDB and MongoDB for certain uses, but kept Oracle for others. And the numbers out from Oracle today suggest that the company's databases are not just being used by cloud customers, but behind the scenes as well.
The issue is that Oracle is almost like an infrastructure you can't get rid of, no matter how expensive, even compared to the value and features of open source alternatives. Too many Oracle-savvy users depend on the core features of the company's database to build applications, even in the cloud, and they are not willing to change -- often for good reason, I'm sure. However, we have to consider the long-term value of not seeking thriftier alternatives.
This article, "Oracle's journey to the cloud -- and to the bank," originally appeared at InfoWorld.com. Read more of David Linthicum's Cloud Computing blog and track the latest developments in cloud computing at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.