Amazon leaves Oracle support
Amazon leaves Oracle – cause to celebrate in November 2019. On 1 November, it turned off its Oracle data warehouse, and in a huge act of on-premise hosting, migrated their enterprise from Oracle to its own Amazon Web Services (AWS).
It required a move of 75 petabytes of internal data stored in nearly 7,500 Oracle Databases. All had to be moved across and integrated into its own AWS database services.
Why did Amazon move?
Put simply, Amazon migrated its systems probably for the same reasons you might consider moving.
Amazon evaluated its internal systems to ensure they were as efficient, secure and performing as well as they could be. Through doing so, the team at Amazon realised just how much time they were wasting on managing and scaling their thousands of legacy Oracle Databases. Their own database administrators were mostly focused on just keeping their systems running, while their data – and Oracle’s prices – continued to rise.
Amazon was also dealing with complex and inefficient hardware provisioning, licence management, and many other issues that are now best handled by modern, managed database services. Amazon Web Services CTO Werner Vogels wrote off the “90’s technology” behind most relational databases.
In short, Amazon’s ERP environment couldn’t keep up with its requirements, and this ongoing issue was keeping Amazon from dedicating its time to more high-value work.
And what does Oracle have to say?
The lead up to Oracle and Amazon going their separate ways has involved some entertaining challenges from Oracle’s CTO Larry Ellison. In 2018, Ellison commented, “there is no way that… any normal person would move from an Oracle Database to an Amazon Database.”
Ellison’s philosophy on what classes as normality aside, he also expressed doubt about Amazon’s capabilities. “I don’t think they can do it […] They’ve had 10 years to get off Oracle and they’re still on Oracle. […] They think of themselves as a competitor. It’s kind of embarrassing when Amazon uses Oracle.” These are the sorts of comments being made about Oracle’s own customers.
As it happens, when Amazon finalised the Oracle Database shutdown, Oracle declined to provide a comment.
Always selling
Oracle is keeping its head in the data Clouds, sticking to its sales pitch for Cloud-based services. The persistent theme during Amazon’s migration besides scepticism, was Oracle’s efforts to promote its autonomous Cloud database; in effect, what its Cloud can do, and what Amazon’s can’t do.
Nevertheless, Amazon has moved away from Oracle and its offers of Cloud services. It’s understandable on Amazon’s part, given the matter of cost, complexity, length of transition, and potential unexpected issues due to the Cloud platform being so new.
Amazon took the stance that, if it was going to migrate anyway, it might as well do so on its own terms.
Amazon and SAP
But this isn’t just an Oracle story. Around the same time that Amazon leaves Oracle, it announces its new functionalities, intending to win SAP Cloud ERP customers.
In the same week as its Oracle shutdown, AWS introduced new EC2 instances packed with large amounts of RAM.
This may be of interest to any customers who wish to run S/4HANA. The HANA database, which underpins this software, is “in memory” technology. The data is held “in memory,” rather than stored on discs. This creates a strong necessity for very large amounts of memory on any servers hosting HANA systems. This has meant that traditionally, only SAP has been able to support its own S4/HANA product, but with Amazon’s announcement, this is no longer the case. AWS is now offering larger servers for hosting HANA with 18TiB or 24TiB of memory.
So, not only did Amazon leave Oracle, it’s now a competitor, able to target customers who could host their SAP systems on Oracle.
Amazon made a change – and you can too
There is a video available to watch on YouTube that captures the moment when Amazon switched off its Oracle services. Two words – ‘stopped oracle’ – appear on screen. Then there’s applause, Champagne bottles being opened, and people taking pictures on their phones. AWS CTO Werner Vogels described it as the “best day” at Amazon.
These actions speak incredible volumes. This was an actual celebration on Amazon’s part to be finally free of Oracle’s services. To see that much joy in a cancelled service certainly makes a statement about the service in question.
If you want to follow in their footsteps, you can.
Join the Support Revolution
Amazon was free from being Oracle’s hostage in a rather unique method. Amazon left Oracle Support, onto a new database of its own devising, which is an approach that is not going to be an option for most.
Switching to a third-party support provider like Support Revolution wouldn’t necessarily result in a shutdown of your Oracle database. You are simply choosing to have us provide your software support and maintenance instead of Oracle. Everything is managed by us and you wouldn’t need to alter your systems. We keep your current ERP as it is; customisations in-tact and no upgrades necessary.
And if you did decide to switch Oracle for Amazon, we can do that too. We can even manage the software for you.
You get to free yourself from Oracle’s fees, upgrade cycles and insistence on joining its Cloud services, and save at least 50% on annual support contracts, all while receiving a higher level of service.
We can help you migrate away from Oracle – although the party and Champagne bottles aren’t included, sorry!
Because unlike Ellison, we think it’s perfectly normal to want to get away from Oracle. Don’t put up with Oracle any longer. Join our revolution today.
