It has been proven that great rivals can be friends or at least work together or give the utmost respect to one another. Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, Manny Pacqiuao and Erik Morales, Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost – these legendary sports heroes were great rivals in their respective fields but in the end, their rivalry was set aside and a partnership was created. In the IT world , the same thing has happened. No one has thought of this thing happening but it did. Oracle, Microsoft and Salesforce.com Inc. are casting aside their rivalry and have created a partnership to bolster their cloud computing services aimed at businesses that wants to move their software online. These industry leaders have competed for decades to sell technology to the largest companies around the world. With the present IT environment, they face a heavy pressure from upcoming and established rivals that sell cheaper services that are based in remote data centers. The alliance will result in Microsoft will offer Oracle’s Database, Java and WebLogic Server to Windows Azure users. On the other hand, Oracle will push Linux to be available to Windows Azure customers while Saleforce is buying Oracle hardware and software to power the mentioned applications. The collaboration will lure customers looking for more technical compatibility between the different products. The tie up will not receive any major competitive challenges in the cloud market but the cooperation between these companies was seen as an important step.
Will The Game Change?
Is the partnership a game changer? Microsoft and Oracle representatives said that it is not a game changer but it shows that both companies are pretty serious about their cloud computing environment. This also shows that these long time rivals are now working together and proves how big the opportunity is in cloud computing. The partnership will open up doors and potential avenues of growth in the future.
This alliance means that Microsoft will be promoting Linux and Java based software, which ironically rivals to its own Windows platform. The database of Oracle will be upgraded later this year and will be called 12c, which will compete with Microsoft’s own SQL Server. The experts stated that any company that uses Microsoft’s Azure cloud service that allows companies to run and build online programs will be able to upload information into Oracle’s database. 45% of the world’s database market last 2012 was controlled by Oracle while 20% was fair for Microsoft and 18% for International Business machines Corp. (IBM).
The Platform Battles
The alliance will give Microsoft a solid competitive advantage versus their top rivals. This will also push the efforts of Microsoft to compete with the leader in Virtualization software company VMware Inc. oracle will also make its version of the open source Linux OS that is available in Azure.
Microsoft’s Cloud service Azure has lagged behind Amazon Web Service (AWS), this deal with Oracle will provide the drive it needs to gain a solid hold in the enterprise market.
Roselen is a system analyst and currently specializes with sql servers and virtual dba. Get more interesting news and tips about sql servers at http://www.wardyit.com/.
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