Oracle seems to believe it can top public cloud market leaders Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google’s Cloud Platform without as many data centres.
Each of these companies both build and sell large arrays of servers, storage and networking to businesses, many of which look to them for help in building data centres.
According to a recent report from Canalys, Amazon Web Services (AWS) alone holds 33.8 percent of the cloud market share for 2016, whilst Microsoft, Google and IBM combined hold 30.8 percent.
Surprisingly, Oracle falls behind by holding just 1.7 percent of that market, but despite this Oracle’s CEO, Mark Hurd believes the company’s minimal data centres are more efficient as they run hardware and supercharged databases.
In an interview with Fortune, Mark Hurd, CEO, Oracle said: “If I have two-times faster computers, I don’t need as many data centres. If I can speed up the database, maybe I need one fourth as many data centres. I can go on and on about how tech drives this.
Read more: Cloud wars: Oracle CEO labels AWS infrastructure ‘old’
“Our core advantage is what we’ve said all along, which is that it’s about the intellectual property and the software, not about who’s got the most real estate.”
The company argues that it performs faster and more effectively than its cloud rivals with less data centres, claiming that its big machines are cheaper and more efficient.
This is Oracle’s Exadata servers, which features a scale-out design with industry-standard servers in the form of turbocharged machines.
Although, in comparison AWS recently announced that it has converted 22,000 databases from other vendors to its own database services.
In which, Oracle’s Hurd said: “How much database market will Oracle lose to Amazon Aurora? My guess is close to zero.
“The third largest database in the world is IBM DB2, and it’s been going out of business for 20 years. If it was so easy to replace databases, DB2 market share would be zero.”
The company’s CEO also previously referred to AWS’ infrastructure as “old,” comparing it to its own technology which he claims is “newer and fresher.”
