Is Hybrid Cloud the Real Story at OpenWorld?

“Hybrid cloud is our foundation and focus.” – Oracle SVP Steve Daheb

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After keynotes from Larry Ellison and Mark Hurd, there’s no doubt that Oracle is confident about its future not just as a leader in the cloud space, but as THE leader. They unveiled a long list of product launches and upgrades. But a critical part of this story is their recognition that on-premise solutions won’t disappear overnight, so a successful cloud strategy needs to recognize the investments already made.

Earlier this year, Ellison predicted that SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS would have a “decade of co-existence” (a term one might expect to hear from the United Nations, not the Silicon Valley.) Rather than seeking a type of single-cloud purity, his team at Oracle is happy to value of different approaches to cloud and the need to integrate with existing infrastructure. As my colleague Mark Polly noted, one big point of emphasis during Ellison’s Sunday keynote was the idea that you can run the same software on premise and the cloud. And Oracle director of strategic communications Michael Hickins summarized the opportunity for Oracle’s strategic partners with expertise in both cloud and on-site solutions: “Suites of best-of-breed and richly integrated applications have always won because they let customers shorten the time to value, move and analyze data across functions, and avoid costly and expensive integration.”

Research firm MarketsandMarkets has predicted a compound annual growth rate of 27% for the hybrid cloud market between now and 2019. What is driving this growth? Oracle’s Daheb summarized it by stating, “Smaller and medium-size businesses are more public-cloud-focused. But enterprises and large enterprises say, look, we have tens of years and millions of dollars of investment in on our on-premises environment. Ultimately, what is the best solution? It will be hybrid.”

Also from OpenWorld: What Cloud Integration Challenges are Business Facing?