Introduction to Oracle Cloud

The cloud computing services provided by the Oracle Corporation are popular as Oracle Cloud. The Oracle Cloud provides storage services, servers, networks, etc that are delivered to the customers using a global network consisting of a number of data centers that are managed by the Oracle Corporation. Each cloud is deployed in a region wherein each region consists of three availability domains that are fault independent in nature. There are independent data centers inside each of these availability domains. These data centers are isolated in terms of the network as well as in terms of power. 

Like every cloud service provider (CSP), the services offered by the oracle cloud are available to the customers on-demand over the internet and the users are charged only for what they use. The platform provided by the Oracle cloud is compatible with a large number of open source applications such as Hadoop, Kubernetes, etc, open standards such as HTML5, SQL, etc along with a large number of programming languages, frameworks, tools, and databases. Also, there are some softwares that are Oracle-specific but are open source and can be used as third-party systems. One thing to note is that the oracle cloud can be deployed only in the private cloud, public cloud, and hybrid cloud. 

The services delivered to the customers are broadly categorized as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), and Data as a Service (DaaS). The customers rent the services provided under these categories which are then used to develop, integrate, and deploy applications in the cloud. Now, let us understand the services provided to the customers under each category. 

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) 

The infrastructure provided by the Oracle cloud is commonly known as Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) which includes the following offerings: 

• Storage: The storage services offered include block volumes, object storage and archive storage. These storage services are able to activate the databases, content as well as applications with common APIs and protocols. 
• Network: The OCI provides the customers with a network which contains IP addresses, routes, subnets, firewalls. These all are fully connected and are able to successfully support existing as well as new networks. Also, these networks ensure end-to-end security. 
• Compute: In order to perform the compute services, the company offers virtual machine instances of different capabilities according to the requirement of the workloads. Also, bare metal servers and bare metal GPU servers can be rented as and when required. All the services possess the capability to scale up and scale down automatically. 
• Database: This helps the customers to deploy Oracle databases in the cloud environment. This can be done for real-time applications and is done using granular controls and data security. 
• Load Balancing: This feature is used to route the traffic automatically across the availability domains (high availability) and fault tolerance (hosted applications). 
• Governance: The OCI helps its users to deal with auditing as well as Identity and Access Management by providing access management checks, data integrity checks, and traceability. 
• Ravello: This feature allows the users to deploy their existing VMware or other workloads on OCI and this is done without performing any modification to the network, storage, and virtual machines. 
• Fast Connect: It is used to provide private connectivity on cloud networks. 
  

Platform as a Service (PaaS) 

The platform services provided by the Oracle cloud are commonly known as Oracle Cloud Platform (OCP) which includes the following offerings: 

• Integration: Using this feature, the OCP allows the customers to integrate the cloud applications. This is achieved using replication and integration techniques, management of the API as well as the data migration. Services providing these features are namely GoldenGate Cloud Service, Integration Cloud, SOA Cloud Service etc. 
• Security: The OCP provides secure access to its customers using security applications. These applications also monitor the hybrid cloud environment along with addressing the other IT requirements. 
• Application Development: In order to develop the applications, the OCP provides its customers with an application development platform that is an open standard. It allows users to build, deploy, and manage cloud applications. The platform fully supports cloud-native, low code application development. The OCP also takes care of diversity in applications i.e. it provides diagnostics for Java applications and a DevOps platform for CI/CD. 
• Business Analytics: This platform provided by the company can be used to analyze the data. Also, it can be used to generate insights from the data warehouses, applications, etc where a large amount of data is placed and used. These services are available under names such as Big data Preparation, Essbase, Analytics Cloud, etc. 
• Management: This platform is based on machine learning (ML) and Big Data operations which is used to provide monitoring, management, and analytics. This platform is used to improve the IT stability and DevOps, prevent applications from outraging, and to harden the security. The services available here are named Log Analytics, Security Monitoring, and Orchestration, etc. 
• Content and Experience: This platform is used to provide the customers with content collaborations and website and workflow management. This is an inbuilt feature that comes with the Oracle SaaS services. These are available under the names such as DIVA Cloud, Experience Cloud, etc. 
  

Software as a Service (SaaS)

The SaaS applications provided by the Oracle cloud are commonly known as Oracle Cloud Applications (OCA) which includes the following offerings: 

• SaaS Analytics 
• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) 
• Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) 
• Internet of Things (IoT) 
• Customer Experience (CX) 
• Blockchain Cloud Services, etc 
  

Data as a service (DaaS)

The platform services provided by the Oracle cloud are commonly known as Oracle Data Cloud (ODC). This platform is used to analyze the customer data that is powered by the Oracle ID Graph. 

Following are the major companies that rely on the Oracle cloud services for their businesses:

• Dropbox 
• Samsung 
• Zoom Video Communications 
• Yamaha Corporation 
• Yum! Brands