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Oracle's new cloud rated 'minimum viable product' ... for now

Oh and Larry's cut-price claim ignores that most people buy cloud as reserved instances

Oracle's gone in hard on cloud this week, promising a stellar, cheap cloud that has already erased Amazon Web Services' lead.

But Gartner analyst Lydia Leong begs to differ. She's squeezed out a quick assessment of Big Red's latest cloud and says: “I would characterize this early offering as minimum viable product; it is the foundation of a future competitive offering, rather than a competitive offering today.”

Leong also says given Oracle's cloud pricing claims the following kick:

It is unlikely that Oracle’s announced price-point — 20 per cent below AWS list prices — will be sufficient to move the needle in a market where AWS’s 'real' prices are lowered up to 70 per cent by reserved instances (plus AWS negotiates custom discounts), and where Google is already competing intensively on price (especially on negotiated deals) and has an offering substantially more featureful than what Oracle will have in the market in the next year.

Leong's not entirely negative about Oracle's cloud: she says the company has hired well from other hyperscale operators and assembled a team of “credible product and engineering people who, in my opinion, understand what they need to build and the enormous challenges ahead of them.”

“Based on a detailed engineering briefing that Oracle provided to myself and my colleagues, I would say that smart and scalable choices seem to have been made throughout,” Leong said. She also notes that Oracle is yet to flick the switch on lots of services, such as cloudy VMs, that will get it closer to its rivals.

Overall she feels the Oracle Cloud's best days are ahead of it, adding that the news “should be seen as a positive move for Oracle, but one with many open questions about its future.” ®

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