Oracle's layoff intended to allow cloud computing [full text]

Science & Technology Recently, according to foreign media reports, Oracle recently conducted a large-scale layoffs. Different from earlier, the number of layoffs was as high as 2,500. The affected employees were mainly concentrated in the hardware sector and the Solaris operating system department.

Although Oracle has not made a positive response to this, if the news is true, then 40-year-old Oracle is facing a transformation, perhaps a positive signal from the layoffs.

Oracle layoffs intended to give way to cloud computing

"Scalpel" extends to hardware

Oracle started with software, and its performance in the hardware field has been unsatisfactory. With the acquisition of Sun Microsystems entering the hardware industry, server sales have remained tepid. During the period, the company also made strategic adjustments. For example, the company abandoned the low-end server business to focus on developing high-end servers, but it still could not bring considerable revenue for it.

From the perspective of the entire market, the traditional server market is deteriorating. Oracle's desolateness is only a microcosm of the overall environment of the industry. More and more users are beginning to consider adopting cloud data centers to expand, and even replace their own data centers, which directly leads to the decreasing frequency of customers replacing their traditional servers. To make matters worse, mainstream cloud service providers tend to use their own designed servers instead of third-party brands.

Cloud computing is a new opportunity for Oracle. As Oracle's old rival in the cloud computing field, Salesforce achieved $2.56 billion in revenue in the second quarter of this year. During the same period, Oracle's financial report data also showed that the integrated cloud business revenue was as high as 1.053 billion US dollars, an increase of 62% over the same period last year, an increase far more than the other traditional businesses involved.

While the business is bleak, there is a lot of wind and water. Therefore, it is not difficult to understand why Oracle has extended its “scalpel” for layoffs to the hardware field and has fully supported the cloud computing business.

At the same time, other competitors are also accelerating the deployment of cloud computing services. Microsoft, Amazon, Google and others have all made cloud computing a key business in the future. Perhaps it is these competitors who are pressing harder and harder, so that Oracle is determined to be desperate in the field of cloud computing.

SaaS or become a wise choice

In general, cloud computing is mainly divided into three service modes, namely IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), SaaS (Software as a Service) and PaaS (Platform as a Service).

As a latecomer in the field of cloud computing, Oracle's founder Larry Ellison chose SaaS as a breakthrough, which is a good choice. Moreover, Oracle CEO Mark Hurd also made five predictions about the cloud computing industry after 10 years: 80% of enterprise production applications will be migrated to SaaS cloud; the top two SaaS cloud application providers will occupy 80% The market share; 100% of new development tests (Dev/Test) will run on the cloud; almost all enterprise data will be stored on the cloud; enterprise-level cloud services will be the most secure IT environment.

The above forecast reveals Oracle's optimism about the future of SaaS. Relying on its powerful database and application software, Oracle also has enough capabilities to emerge in the field of SaaS services.

On the one hand, unlike other SaaS cloud services, which often cover only a single aspect or aspects of an enterprise application, Oracle adopts a systematic layout and has launched a variety of enterprise application SaaS cloud services at one go. This integrated service not only reduces the cost of the customer's system integration and data integration, but also significantly increases the efficiency of the company.

On the other hand, in the U.S. IaaS market, Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud have formed a three-way trend. In particular, Amazon has scored nearly 50% of the market share. In the oligopolistic market, Oracle has found it difficult to find a breakthrough, and choosing another way is a more sensible choice.

In addition, although Oracle has a rival in the cloud software industry such as Salesforce, SaaS is in the upper reaches of the cloud computing industry, and it is easier to share the rapid development of cloud computing dividends.

At present, the rise of cloud computing has brought a fierce blow to traditional hardware and software industries. Traditional IT vendors such as IBM, Microsoft, and Dell have long been out of sight, and giants are looking for new directions for survival and development. For example, IBM is constantly investing in big data analytics and artificial intelligence in an attempt to achieve overtaking in the cloud computing domain.

Big magnates have increased their betting on the cloud computing market, which will inevitably bring greater market uncertainty. It is a foregone conclusion that cloud computing has subverted traditional IT. How to transform to adapt to the new era of competition will be the subject that former “big bosses” must face.