How to enjoy the benefits of cloud when your data needs to stay on premises

This is the fifth article in a series created to help you make the most out of your Oracle enterprise applications with the help of IBM and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). Discover how to combine business and technology skills to create new opportunities and modernize your mission critical applications from the inside out. The six articles highlight why migrating your on-premise Oracle applications to the cloud is a good business strategy in the current context and how IBM can help you accelerate your transition while keeping costs low. 

This article discusses how businesses can leverage Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer and IBM Services toachieve the benefits of the public cloud without moving their databases outside of their on-premises IT infrastructure.

Moving vital databases to the cloud 

There’s no denying that the impact of cloud computing is changing the way business works. The cloud is powerful and flexible and can help forward-looking organizations harness emerging technologies that 20 years ago was almost impossible. 

However, not all data can sit on a public cloud. There are numerous large organizations—such as financial institutions, government agencies, health companies and more—who still run most of their workloads on premises because they need to keep sensitive data in their own data center in order to address regulatory, data sovereignty, latency and other concerns. These organizations are missing on huge opportunities to tap into cloud-based innovations. 

Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer can help companies experience the already known benefits of cloud, such as pay-for-use, elastic capacity and the latest technology updates, while addressing strict location requirements. The service delivers high-performance Exadata Cloud Service capabilities and it physically sits in your own data center, behind your trusted firewall.  

“For customers who require their databases to be located on-premises, Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer extends the Oracle Cloud into their data center. This allows customers to harness the financial and technical benefits of the Oracle Cloud and Exadata while also addressing requirements such as sovereignty laws, industry regulations, corporate policies or security requirements.”

Chris Craft, Director Product Management, Oracle

Experience all the benefits of cloud in the safety of your premises

Exadata is a combined hardware and software platform built to provide organizations with optimized functionality for enterprise class databases and their associated workloads. The platform can easily scale-out and deliver database optimized compute, networking, and storage for fastest performance and lowest cost. In addition, it can deliver mission critical availability and a security-rich environment for all Online Transaction Processing (OLTP), Data Warehousing (DW), In-Memory Analytics, and Mixed/Hybrid workloads, making it the ideal database consolidation platform for the cloud.

The Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer can provide users with an authentic public cloud experience in their own data centers. The experience can facilitate the same software, control plane, and services of a public cloud while enabling complete data control. Exadata Cloud@Customer is deployed using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure management APIs. According to Oracle, organizations can realize average benefits worth $1.93 million per organization per year, a 356% return on investment and a breakeven point of six months when using Exadata Cloud@Customer. 

Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer brings exciting benefits for enterprises ready to introduce on-demand, configurable IT resources in their environment: 

-       Increased performance with complete data sovereignty

-       Adaptable computational characteristics, based on your actual needs

-       True pay-per-use subscription pricing

In the data center, IBM and Oracle work together to create a seamless experience. Oracle owns, manages and controls hypervisor, database servers, storage servers—the internal fabric of the data center. IBM invokes Oracle Automation for database and VM lifecycle operations and performs all of the database management and optimization tasks, from creation to patching, backup and scaling. 

How IBM can help you bring cloud into your data center

For over three decades, IBM Services has facilitated and managed evolving Oracle business, technology and innovation. IBM Services can help you extract the benefits of Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer with confidence and certainty. Our broad portfolio of services can help ensure the successful achievement of key objectives such as database installation and administration, monitoring, systems backup, disaster recovery, security, RAC management and more. 

IBM can assist every step of your journey with tailor-made solutions that help you achieve the full benefits of cloud and propel your enterprise into a digitally driven future. Our global teams of experts leverage a combination of business and technology skills to help organizations plan, implement and manage the modernization of vital applications and databases that can’t leave the premises. 

Opening new possibilities in the world of finance

IBM is actively engaged in several Oracle Cloud at Customer programs and I would like to highlight the work we have started with one of the largest school districts in the country that needed to upgrade their architecture in order to continue delivering superior services for their demanding customers. 

By selecting Exadata Cloud@Customer and moving their workloads to a cloud environment, the organization is set to transform the data center, further positioning their capabilities to support innovation and transformation. By choosing IBM as their partner in this journey to cloud, the organization finds the right balance between the governance of on-premises data and the performance and flexibility of a cloud deployment. 

For this organization, the modernization process is ongoing and includes:

-       100% cloud function behind their own firewall

-       Subscription-based database licensing and support cost eliminated

-       One click patching and provisioning and no outage for Oracle DB 19c patching

-       Every 4 years Cloud @ Customer is upgraded

In pursuit of digital transformation, the organization is relying on IBM’s ability to design and implement an architectural solution that provides simplicity, agility and elasticity. IBM assists the organization with Exadata database server management and monitoring as well as Exadata storage management. In addition, IBM experts handle database installation, monitoring, backup and restore, as well as any tuning, refresh, patching or upgrading. Any troubleshooting, issue resolution or Implementation and support of new database features, as required, is also handled by IBM teams.

For this client and the businesses it serves the modernization of on-premises databases and applications will support their vision for speed to market and adoption of the cloud, in today’s ‘always-on’ and hyper-connected services landscape.

Discover the world’s most advanced on-premises cloud experience

Explore all the ways in which your business can stay relevant, agile and cost-effective with Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer and IBM Services by joining the webinar on Thursday, January 28, 2021, starting 11:00 AM ET. Join me and my guests, Lauren Baker (Oracle Marketing & Comms, Global Business Services, IBM), Eddie Shain (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and PaaS Lead, IBM), Shahzad Gandhi (North America Oracle CTO, IBM) and Chris Craft (Director Product Management, Oracle) in a discussion of what’s possible and how to get there. You can join the event here.

This webinar is one in a series of six debating why OCI is the best option for moving Oracle apps and workloads and how IBM can implement and manage every aspect of your migration to Oracle cloud. You can register for the series here.

Comment below and let me know what your biggest cloud migration challenges are and how you are tackling them.