The Oracle 12c holds different significance for different people, depending on which corporate sector they belong to. With Cloud COmputing being all the hype these days, the 12c is Oracle’s offering to its users. What is unique about 12c is that it tries to address the problem of Multi-tenancy. You can see that there is a radical, and crucial change in the core database architecture, brought about by the introduction of Container Databases also called CBD and Pluggable Databases (PDB). The memory and process is owned by the Container Database. The container holds the metadata where the PDBs hold the user data. You can create up to 253 PDBs including the seed PDB.
In a large setup, it is common to see 20 or even 30 different instances running side-by-side in a production environment. With these many instances, it is a maintenance nightmare as all these instances have to be separately upgraded, patched, monitored, tuned, RAC enabled, adjusted, backed up and data guarded. This process had to be repeated in olden days but now that is not a headache anymore. With Pluggable Databases feature, you just have to do all this for one single instance. Another interesting feature is that you can even allocate a CPU percentage for each PDB.
The 12c also offers data redaction, more simply, allowing the organization in question to mask data. This way, only relevant personnel will be able to see authorized data which will however, be hidden from other, non relevant users. As for advanced replication and streams; they are history now. They have been replaced with Oracle Golden Gate. So this gives you an ‘invisible column’ in a table. And when a column is defined as invisible, the column won’t appear in generic queries. Pretty cool, isn’t it?
Why choose Oracle Database?
The introduction of a multitenant architecture by Oracle Database 12c makes it easy to deploy and manage database clouds by quickly consolidating multiple databases, and using its Automatic Data Optimization with Heat Map, for compressing and tiering data at a higher density, maximizing resource efficiency and flexibility. These exceptional advancements, combined with major enhancements in availability, security, and big data support, make Oracle Database 12c the ideal platform for private and public cloud deployments.
Kaleem Chaudry, who manages the sales consulting function for all South East Asia, said, “Oracle has a holistic approach when it comes to security; administrative, preventive as well as detective. We have technology such as redaction which restricts the access of data based on the user’s privileges. We also have capabilities where we restrict the access of the DBAs (Database Administration) besides possessing technologies which prevent direct attack on to the database server through sequel injection, a term used to define a malicious code being injected in the database. So across all aspects, database security safeguarding data as it resides in the database is critical and Oracle has a holistic approach to it.”
So how does the Oracle 12c database work for clients within Pakistan? Akasha Sultan, regional director for Oracle application who manages the application portfolio in ASEAN region, answered the question. Of the 17 countries where he oversees transactions, Pakistan is the key market for 12c and the ERP business CRM business intelligence business and cloud portfolio of Oracle.
He said, “Oracle application is a set of portfolio of different breeds of applications that we give to our customers; 40 countries all over the world. The apps vary from ERP, CRM, and business intelligence to cloud applications. During the last five years we have appointed about 65 companies and we have invested millions of dollars to complete a portfolio which gives our customers end-to-end solutions which can cater to their business needs.
Oracle cloud is the most comprehensive cloud offering available, giving the best to its customers across the world. It varies, so we do cloud and platform as a service, we do infrastructure as a service. So when it comes to service, Oracle has the most comprehensive plan… this helps customers go to cloud in a complete fashion including giving them a customized planning and infrastructure, suitable to their needs. We also have Oracle security working at the back to ensure clients’ data security from our end.”
He also felt that businesses should be looking at multiple factors before adopting SASS. One of the key considerations that they should be looking at is the product portfolio and whether the vendor or enterprise they are looking at has a comprehensive set-up or just offers a part of the services. Next, they should also be looking at the infrastructure that will support the SASS application, since this is of utmost importance to ensure data security and if the design involved is ‘smarter’. For Oracle clients’ the beauty of the applications available here is that one may go ala carte or go modula and take one service at a time. This way the next service can be availed at any given point in time.
For Akasha Sultan, they are “very well positioned as of today, in Oracle cloud strategy and we feel in this market is going to be emerging as soon as 3G technology is introduced in Pakistan. The use of data connectivity will also really boost the exercise. Whatever CIO is being talked about today is keen on opting for cloud and adopting it as a focal point of their strategy for next five years. We focus on cloud and our recommendation to our existing 1100 local customers is that they should look at our strategy; make sure they are ready for tomorrow, ready to change their operation cost and benefit from Oracle cloud strategy.”
Pakistan is moving in the right direction, and with the introduction of 3G technology, CIOs in Pakistan have naturally become very aggressive about Oracle cloud, so that it is a vital part of nearly everyone’s strategy. Oracle is currently well-positioned to support its customers and realize their hopes of going cloud. This is because, the Oracle infrastructure, ecosystem and partners are quite capable of taking Pakistan to the next level. Consequently, as soon as large-scale cloud adoption is witnessed in Pakistan, data security here will be better than neighboring countries.
Shariq Rehman, Manager of Oracle fusion middleware for Pakistan and South Asia, says that they compare Pakistan with a group of seven countries, all growing economies including Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Maldives, and Nepal. As a part of heading fusion ware he is responsible for the sales and quarter growth management and the business development for the portfolio.
It’s a very commonly asked question as to why organizations even need solutions on middleware. Says Shariq Rehman, “Middleware has gone a long way over the past decade or two. It basically provides you with a platform of innovation, historically started as an instigation portfolio but may now be considered a complete foundation for your business innovation since it allows you to develop, integrate, and robust applications based on open standards. The unique thing about Oracle is that we offer an open and integrated innovation platform which not only allows you to access desktop applications, but also go on to social mobile or cloud computing. And we are the only ones providing best-in-class middleware solutions, tightly integrated within each other. As businesses grow, they need more agile and resilient applications. Developing for desktop apps is just one part of the game; they need an end-to-end 180 degrees view of the organization. Oracle provides a one stop answer to that.”
Oracle is based on logic server foundation, offering a range of business innovations and process automation product lines. These include web content management, web portable capabilities, documentation and a complete range of integration solutions. And all of this fits perfectly on their exologic machine which is a flagship in the market.
Mobility is the buzzword; everyone, from youngsters to businessmen and even the white collar man, owns a mobile today. Each organization has its own native codes, different architecture and different platforms. For Oracle, this means that they don’t just have to provide enterprise applications on a mobile device but also provide enterprise data. Businesses too, are dealing with this separately. For instance, take companies where a BYOD (bring your own device) culture exists. Employees can bring their own devices and plug into the backing system. Now they’ll have different smart phones, some proprietary or open in nature. IT departments have to offer utmost seamless integration and security to these devices and manageable access, since once a device starts growing, you need a skill-able solution to manage it.
So along with security, organizations are also looking at are how to deploy mobile phones. One challenge is of course integration, the other being the changing of native codes and different applications that are built on different technologies. When you expose such applications to a mobile device, you need to develop APIs and mobile interfaces for them. Similarly there is so much variety on mobile devices themselves that applications can be connected through any means; the web or even another mobile application. This is where Oracle not only offers a complete platform, developing apps from scratch, but also provides mobile applications.
Consequently, there are three areas that companies can look into when deciding upon a strategy for going mobile. Ensure a complete and total mobile development application strategy, such as Oracle provides, is available allowing them to connect to any interface, anywhere and at anytime. Secondly, that this offers you the flexibility to build once and deploy anywhere instead of having to repeat actions; in other words, ensuring customers get better service and constant support, again as Oracle provides. The third object that organizations should keep in mind is security. They could adopt a strategy already being used by other organizations and extend this to their mobile security. Also, as is Oracle’s practice, they should talk to providers about how their connection will be integrated through cloud, web or other platforms. Service-oriented architecture should be adopted not only for the organization, but also catering to the needs of their customer.
Shariq Rehman, adding to that, talked about mobility saying that it is a high growth area where we have new statistics every year. In Pakistan alone over the last five to ten years the number of subscribers has gone up to 120 million. As per market research, by 2015 almost 7 billion devices will be entering the market and out of those a billion will be Smartphones. Researchers say 75% of the market sale of Smartphones is found in Asia. It says 4:1 would be the ratio of Smartphone apps to desktop applications hence signaling a change in mobile development, integration and security.
Their message to prospective clients; “when you look at IT now, look at customer experience, talk to the organization in terms of integration and Oracle will be more than happy to talk to customers in making their experience better.”
