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Linking on-prem data with cloud apps without moving many bytes

Solve the puzzle: A company’s critical customer data is in a multiterabyte on-premises database, and the digital marketing application that uses that data to manage and execute campaigns runs in the cloud. How can the cloud-based marketing software quickly access and leverage that on-premises data?

It’s a puzzle that one small consumer-engagement consulting company, Embel Assist, found its clients facing. The traditional solution, perhaps, would be to periodically replicate the on-premises database in the cloud using extract-transfer-load (ETL) software, but that may take too much time and bandwidth, especially when processing terabytes of data. What’s more, the replicated data could quickly become out of date.

Using cloud-based development and computing resources, Embel Assist found another way to crack this problem. It created an app called EALink that acts as a smart interface between an organization’s customer data sources and Oracle Eloqua, a cloud-based marketing automation platform. EALink also shows how development using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure creates new opportunities for a small and creative company to take on big enterprise data challenges.

Say the on-premises CRM system for a drugstore chain has 1 million customer records. The chain wants an e-mail campaign to reach customers who made their last purchase more than a month ago, who live within 20 miles of one set of stores, and who purchased products related to a specific condition. Instead of exporting the entire database into Eloqua, EALink runs the record-extraction query on the CRM system and sends Eloqua only the minimum information needed to execute the campaign. And, the query is run when the campaign is being executed, so the campaign information won’t be out of date.

Learn more about Embel Assist in my story for Forbes, “Embel Assist Links Marketing Apps With Enterprise Data.”

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Keep server apps running during patches with Oracle Autonomous Linux

When a microprocessor vulnerability rocked the tech industry last year, companies scrambled to patch nearly every server they had. In Oracle’s case, that meant patching the operating system on about 1.5 million Linux-based servers.

Oracle finished the job in just 4 hours, without taking down the applications the servers ran, by using Oracle’s own automation technology. The technology involved is at the heart of Oracle Autonomous Linux, which the company announced at Oracle OpenWorld 2019 in San Francisco last month. Oracle has been using Autonomous Linux to run its own Generation 2 Cloud infrastructure, and now it is available at no cost to Oracle Cloud customers.

The last things most CIOs, CTOs, chief information security officers, and even developers want to worry about are patching their server operating systems. Whether they have a hundred servers or hundreds of thousands, that type of maintenance can slow down a business, especially if the maintenance requires shutting down the software running on that server.

A delay is doubly worrying when the reason for the patch is to handle a software or hardware vulnerability. In those instances, delays create an opportunity for malicious operators to strike. If an organization traditionally applies updates to its servers every three months, for example, and a zero-day vulnerability comes out just after that update, the company is vulnerable for months. When updates require a lengthy process, companies are reluctant to do it more frequently.

Not with Autonomous Linux, which can patch itself quickly after a vulnerability is found and the patch is applied by Oracle. Combined with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s other cost advantages, customers can expect significant total cost of ownership savings compared to other Linux versions that run either on-premises or in the cloud.

Underneath the Autonomous Linux service is Oracle Linux, which remains binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Therefore, software that runs on RHEL will run on Oracle Autonomous Linux in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure without change.

Learn more in my story for Forbes, “With Autonomous Linux, Oracle Keeps Server Apps Running During Patching.”

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FedRAMP provides on-ramp to standardized government cloud computing

Phoenix City Hall

U.S. government agencies needing high levels of information security can upgrade to use the latest cloud technologies to run their applications. That’s thanks to a pair of new cloud infrastructure regions from Oracle. The cloud data center complexes are authorized against strenuous FedRAMP and Department of Defense requirements.

The two new cloud infrastructure regions are in Ashburn, Virginia, outside Washington, D.C., and Phoenix, Ariz. They are part of Oracle’s goal to have 36 Generation 2 Cloud data center regions, offering services such as Oracle Autonomous Database, live by the end of 2020, including three additional dedicated regions to support Department of Defense agencies and contractors.

FedRAMP, more formally known as the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, provides a standard approach to federal security assessments, authorizations, and monitoring of cloud services. With FedRAMP, once a cloud provider is approved to provide a set of services or applications to one branch of government, other departments can use that service without getting a new security authorization.

With FedRAMP authorization in place, a federal agency can more quickly move an application or database workload that’s running in a government-run data center into Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Agencies can also build and launch new cloud-native applications directly on Oracle’s cloud.

The cloud also lets federal agencies tap the latest technology and analytics strategies, including applying artificial intelligence and machine learning. Those techniques often rely on GPU-based computing—graphics processing units—which are used for math-heavy tasks such as high-performance scientific computing, data analytics, and machine learning.

Learn more about FedRAMP in my article for Forbes, “With FedRAMP Clearance, Oracle Brings Its Gen 2 Cloud Infrastructure To Government.”