Microsoft and Oracle are going into direct conflict with market leader Amazon Web Services (AWS) by integrating their competitive cloud platforms. This will include a direct network link between Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud, and a single system for centrally managing infrastructure access.
With the direct link between Azure and Oracle Cloud it should be possible to share data more quickly between the platforms, writes Silicon Angle. Information travels over connections at speeds of 10 GB per second. According to the companies, these connections are much faster and more reliable than the public Internet.
The direct network link is already available in Oracle’s cloud facility in Ashburg, Virginia and in Azure US East. The availability of these will be extended to more regions in the course of time. In addition, joint security functions will be rolled out later, which are intended to bring the platforms even closer together.
Microsoft and Oracle also promise to provide unified identity management. Enterprises will thus be able to use a single system to centrally manage infrastructure access on Azure and Oracle Cloud. That single system is Active Directory from Microsoft. Administrators can thus manage which applications can use which resources, and log in to both cloud platforms with the same login details, rather than with separate accounts.
Use cases
Microsoft and Oracle see two important ways in which the integrations can be used. One use case is that enterprises use unified identity management to consolidate access control for Azure and Oracle Cloud. Many large companies already use products from both cloud services, which can make this an attractive option.
Vinay Kumar, Oracle’s vice president of product management, thinks that enterprises in the long run are going to share their applications among the cloud platforms of the companies. The direct network link then allows workloads such as analytics systems running on Azure to use Oracle’s cloud-based databases to store and process information.
This cross-cloud connectivity must be available for both proprietary software and Oracle business applications deployed in Azure.
This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.