For those of you following industry cloud adoption -- and trying to figure out how the horse race between the four big players is shaking out -- today's news is certainly worth considering.
AT&T is agreeing to move a significant number of their Oracle databases to the Oracle Cloud. Plus they've agreed to start using some of our SaaS services in specific areas, like field service.
It's a pretty big deal.
I've long argued that moving to a cloud model is inevitable -- even for established and proficient IT organizations like AT&T.
But it's once thing to predict something, and another thing entirely to see it actually happen.
The Basics
On paper, it's pretty straightforward: AT&T's Oracle databases are going to the Oracle Cloud. Mark Hurd said there's over an exabyte involved.
For those of you that left your storage calculator at home, an exabyte is a thousand petabytes, or a thousand times bigger what we usually consider "really big" in the storage world.
Put differently, that's a million terabytes. That's a whole lot of on-premises storage that won't be needed anymore.
No revenue numbers were announced, nor were timelines for migration, which I would guess to be rather lengthy. I have no detailed knowledge of the announcement, I just saw the press release like everyone else.
So the rest here is purely my personal opinion and speculation, and certainly not Oracle's official perspective.
But Why Move?
Anyone who's worked with AT&T knows they have a very proficient -- and well-funded -- IT operation. These guys have been designing and deploying massive systems for many decades, and doing it well.
Why would one of the largest -- and most capable -- IT organizations publicly throw in the towel, and say that they're going to cloud with all of their databases?
My first guess is that it's all about business. Being a telco is a capital-intensive business, especially if you're in the midst of building out the next 5G network. Where would you like to tie up your finite capital? More data centers -- or new networks?
My second guess is that anyone who has over an exabyte of data sitting in Oracle databases most likely has an enormous staff with expensive expertise looking after all of that: backup and recovery, patching, tuning, upgrading and the like. Not needed in the cloud. So a huge operational expense saving as well.
Business often matters much more than technology.
But Why Oracle?
I sometimes get the question -- why Oracle Cloud for Oracle databases? I have to take a deep breath, and state the obvious -- where better to run the Oracle database? Faster, cheaper, more reliably, more securely, etc.?
Does anyone think you'd get a better experience in some other cloud? I think not.
If that doesn't do it for you, where do you think the best place to run Office 365 might be? Microsoft Azure.
My third guess is that AT&T did their homework (as they always do), and came to the exact same conclusion.
My fourth guess would be that they found Oracle's Cloud at Customer offering attractive. Cloud at Customer uses Oracle's cloud machines to deliver a public cloud experience in the customer's data center.
Same services, same operational model, same software, management, etc. This would give AT&T the ability to move to a pure opex model, but still make decisions as to where databases actually resided -- our data centers, or theirs.
Some Final Observations
Over the last several years, I've met several large IT organizations that were convinced they could build a better cloud internally than was available externally.
Few -- if any -- of these massive efforts could even begin to claim success.
It's been proven to be harder than it looks, takes some very smart people, boatloads of cash, a long time and a tolerance for risk. And the results aren't usually all that good.
I suspect that this might be yet another instance of this phenomenon.
There's something else to consider: this is very likely not just about databases. Moving a database to a cloud is rarely useful in isolation: there are applications that use the data, analytics and reporting, and more. Data gravity and latency are a thing, even for a network company like AT&T.
Highly likely a bunch of that stuff is moving to the Oracle Cloud as well, it's simple logic.
And What To Expect More Of
Cloud has changed the economic equation for business. It's an economizer -- it saves money. It's an enabler -- innovate faster and for less money than before. And it's an equalizer -- small groups have access to the exact same advanced firepower as the largest organizations.
As business leaders start to realize we're now playing by a new set of rules, expect to see more wholesale moves to the cloud.
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