Cloud Is Here. Take A Deep Breath, Reflect and Jump On!

In my last
blog post, I mentioned that I’ve had a lot of chances to chat with IT
organizations – everyone from C-suite executives to Oracle DBAs and
developers – about how they plan to migrate their existing Oracle Databases and
corresponding computing infrastructures to the Cloud.

While there’s still a fair amount of confusion over how to craft,
proceed and checkpoint an appropriate Cloud journey, there’s almost always one
common, yet unspoken thought, in these discussions: Exactly how will Cloud
impact our IT organization’s culture?
In other words, what’s going to be the impact on the human capital that comprises the guts, intelligence and experience
of our carefully-assembled team of experts?

In a November 2017 interview
at Computing Magazine’s Cloud and Infrastructure
Summit, John Abel, Head of Oracle Technology and Cloud in the UK, Ireland and
Israel, summarized his experience with all things cloud as a challenge to an IT
organization’s culture, rather than the technology in use:

“The
biggest risk to the CIO today is Cloud. It’s because of what the business can do without technologists. So it’s
time to challenge the IT function and ask things like do we really need our own
virus scanners and firewalls?”

Abel also said that Cloud solutions are not necessarily
cheaper:

“About
56% of users say that Cloud is the same or more expensive. It’s not a price
battle, it’s about simplification. … There is no magic in Cloud. The magic is
hidden away in the infrastructure, power, network, storage, disc and other
heritage problems you might have. Think about how to challenge your cloud
vendor as to how they remove those challenges or they’ll become the heritage
problems of the future.”

ViON is truly a multi-cloud
vendor; we have expertise in
Microsoft Azure and AWS, as well as all facets of Oracle Public Cloud and
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. That being said, we recognize that Oracle
databases tend to present unique challenges when migrating to a Cloud solution,
regardless of whether a private, hybrid or public cloud solution has been
selected. This is especially relevant when an IT organization that’s considering
a Cloud migration is also responsible for maintenance and upkeep of
Oracle-centric applications like Enterprise
Business Suite (EBS), Oracle Business
Intelligence (OBIEE), Peoplesoft, or any one of the cornucopia of
specialized Oracle application suites.

With the recent release of Oracle Database 18c and the new Autonomous Database for Data Warehouse (ADDW) this past week,
there’s now another reason for elevated tension among the Oracle DBA community.
Since Larry Ellison announced ADDW would initially be available in the Cloud at
Oracle OpenWorld 2017, the DBAs I’ve spoken with are concerned that their jobs
will be altered forever because ADDW essentially eliminates the need for a
dedicated DBA to oversee the database. I wasn’t surprised to find this level of
angst among all DBA’s – whether based in Hyderabad or Houston.

While the role of DBA will certainly change over the next
3-5 years, I believe the need for qualified professionals will actually probably
increase and ADDW and Cloud will
liberate us from mundane tasks that were essentially colossal wastes of time.
For a deeper dive into what the future portends for the role of Oracle DBA,
check out the astute
viewpoints of my esteemed colleague, Maria Colgan from Oracle.