25 Facts You Should Know About Oracle
Oracle has come a long way in 30 years, from a small database management company to a power player in the cloud industry. We look at milestones in its history.
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1. The company started as Software Development Laboratories in 1977, and switched to Relational Software Inc. in 1979.
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2. Larry Ellison had been the only CEO at Oracle until 2014, when Safra Catz and Mark Hurd were both appointed CEOs. Larry Ellison is now executive chairman and CTO.
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3. One of Software Development Laboratories’ first customers was the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA project’s code name was Oracle.
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4. The first commercial version of Oracle was called Oracle 2 to give tech insiders the impression that the bugs were already worked out of the product.
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5. The early ideas behind Oracle founders Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates’ RDBMS development were largely inspired by a paper written by an IBM researcher.
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6. Oracle built Internet-ready products before there was customer demand. In 1998, Ellison said: “If the Internet turns out not to be the future of computing, we’re toast. But if it is, we’re golden.”
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7. Oracle has made more than 44 acquisitions over the past five years, including the 2010 buyout of Sun Microsystems. Java was one of the key assets Oracle gained from Sun.
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8. Oracle, when it first struck the deal to acquire Sun, referred to Java as “the most important software Oracle has ever acquired.” Oracle and the Java community celebrated Java’s 20th anniversary in 2015.
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9. To demonstrate its continued investment in the industry’s No. 1 programming language, Oracle released Java Development Kit 8, Update 40 earlier this year.
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10. Oracle has been embroiled in several legal battles, including the complex, 5-year-old fight with Google. Back in 2010, Oracle sued Google over the latter’s use of certain Java APIs in its Android operating system.
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11. One of Oracle’s recent big purchases, adding to its data cloud portfolio, is Datalogix Holdings, which specializes in digital marketing analytics—aggregating and providing insights on more than $2 trillion in consumer spending from 1,500 data partners.
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12. Oracle launched a new generation of engineered systems and appliances in January 2015, positioning the company to go after the core data center business.
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13. To better position the company for hardware growth, Oracle recently named hardware infrastructure expert and industry veteran David Donatelli to lead its Converged Infrastructure business. Donatelli was EVP and GM of HP’s Enterprise Group.
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14. Oracle introduced Oracle Analytics Cloud in September 2014, announcing the most comprehensive analytics offering in the cloud.
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15. The Oracle Cloud Platform now offers more than 24 new cloud services, extending its portfolio of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS products.
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16. The most recent cloud additions include Oracle Database Cloud-Exadata, Oracle Archive Storage Cloud, Oracle Big Data Cloud, Oracle Integration Cloud, Oracle Mobile Cloud and Oracle Process Cloud.
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17. Oracle Cloud Platform shows strong adoption: 70-plus million users and more than 33 billion transactions daily. It runs on 54,000 devices and more than 700 petabytes of storage in 19 data centers globally.
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18. Oracle has more than 26,000 partners, with cloud accounting for one of the fastest growing areas of specialization and certification. In the fourth quarter of Fiscal 2015, Oracle’s cloud resale program grew 180%, which was larger than the previous three quarters combined. Year-over-year growth was more than 650%.
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19. Oracle reported revenues of $38.2 billion in fiscal 2015 with cloud offerings accounting for the biggest growth rates.
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20. Cloud SaaS and PaaS revenues were up 32% and cloud IaaS revenues were up 33% in fiscal 2015 (based on constant currency).
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21. To drive revenue with the cloud, the Oracle Cloud resale program allows VADs and VARs to leverage new OPN incentive rebates, regardless of the Oracle Cloud technology (SaaS, PaaS or IaaS).
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22. Oracle added a two-tier distribution model for Oracle Cloud in 2014, enabling partners to leverage VADs to resell and implement services around the Oracle Cloud.
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23. The Cloud resale program provides partners with the ability to sell multi-year deals, as well as leverage renewals and up-sell opportunities.
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24. Oracle announced several new cloud programs at this year’s OPN conference to bolster partner support in the cloud space.
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25. New program highlights announced at OPN include the Oracle Cloud Business Builder Website, as well as enhancements to the Oracle Partner Store, now enabling partners to update their registrations with deal size, deal status and close date information.