Oracle runs to Cloud, where will DBA go? (3)

If you are an Oracle DBA (at least Oracle DBA in a typical company with IT department), can you think of your responsibilities?

You can easily Google the term "typical Oracle DBA works" and will get tons of results. I just pick up one from the top search result. From its "Oracle DBA Responsibilities" list, you will find lots of works done by Oracle DBA is to "create", "maintain", "install", "backup", "support" Oracle databases. I will also add "configure", "patch", "upgrade", etc.

Another chart below can also demonstrate the current "Top DBA Challenges" although the survey was a little bit old.

So, in the coming cloud era, what will be changed for the role of DBA? As said in "Cloud Considerations for DBAs", cloud "can alleviate the need for the administrator to install, configure, and provision the database. This enables the database to scale as needed." In other words, Oracle DBA will work less on the administration of Oracle database, at least the typical works of Oracle DBA.

Does it mean the companies will not need any Oracle DBAs if they build Oracle on the cloud?

About 5 years ago, Oracle Guru Julian Dontcheff already wrote an article - The role of the DBA in the Private Database Cloud.  His point is "The cloud will bring more challenges and need for DBA work to the enterprise."

Another recent article - Key Challenges Facing the Modern Database Administrator from Gerardo Dada, Vice President, Database Product Marketing and Strategy, SolarWinds gave more clear answers to the above question: "the cloud, DevOps, and other shifts in technology are making the entire IT department more application-focused. In the end, applications are what matters to the business and to end users. This means DBAs are being held accountable for application performance, not only database performance."

In the end, what will you do as an Oracle DBA in the cloud era? Oracle has some answers for you too.

When moving to the Oracle Cloud, Oracle DBA will need to understand:

• The overall architecture of the Oracle Database Cloud,
• How to migrate to the cloud,
• How to create an instance,
• How to configure connections,
• How to back up and recover databases in the cloud,
• How to use Cloud DBA tools.

For sure, the above list is not enough. As an Oracle DBA, your goal is to deliver better application performance (yes, application performance). So you will:

• Be proactive and align behind end-user experience as a shared objective across the entire IT organization by looking at application performance and the impact that the database has on it continuously, not only when it becomes a major problem.
• Measure performance based not on an infrastructure resources perspective, but on end-user wait times. Wait-time analysis gives DBAs a view into what end-users are waiting for and what the database is waiting for, providing clear visibility into bottlenecks.
• Keep the stability of databases just as other infrastructure teams or cloud providers striving on stabilizing their networks, hardware, software, etc.

Oracle runs to Cloud, where will DBA go? DevDBA. I replace the "Ops" to DBA in the popular word "DevOps". 

Oracle runs to Cloud, where will DBA go? (2)

As an Oracle DBA, you might think why Oracle cares so much about "CLOUD". For years, Oracle has been the No.1 RDBMS in the market.

Rank			DBMS	Database Model	Score
May 2016	Apr 2016	May 2015			May 2016	Apr 2016	May 2015
1.	1.	1.	Oracle	Relational DBMS	1462.02	-5.51	+19.93
2.	2.	2.	MySQL	Relational DBMS	1371.83	+1.72	+77.56
3.	3.	3.	Microsoft SQL Server	Relational DBMS	1142.82	+7.77	+11.79
4.	4.	4.	MongoDB	Document store	320.22	+7.78	+42.90
5.	5.	5.	PostgreSQL	Relational DBMS	307.61	+3.89	+34.09
6.	6.	6.	DB2	Relational DBMS	185.96	+1.87	-15.09
7.	8.	8.	Cassandra	Wide column store	134.50	+4.83	+27.95
8.	7.	7.	Microsoft Access	Relational DBMS	131.58	-0.39	-14.00
9.	9.	10.	Redis	Key-value store	108.24	-3.00	+13.51
10.	10.	9.	SQLite	Relational DBMS	107.26	-0.70	+2.10

Source: DB-Engines Ranking (as of May 2016)

Source: Gartner (October 2015)

However, when you scrutinize the latest company financial report (March 15, 2016), you will know why Oracle worries about its existing database business and cares more about "CLOUD".

• Cloud software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) revenues were$583 million, up 57% in U.S. dollars and up 61% in constant currency. 
• Cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) revenues were $152 million, down 2% in U.S. dollars and up 2% in constant currency. 
• Total Cloud Revenues were $735 million, up 40% in U.S. dollars and up 44% in constant currency. 

• Total On-Premise Software Revenues were $6.3 billion, down 4% in U.S. dollars and unchanged in constant currency. 
• Total Hardware Revenues were $1.1 billion, down 13% in U.S. dollars and down 8% in constant currency. 
• Total Services Revenues were $793 million, down 7% in U.S. dollars and down 2% in constant currency.

According the report from Fortune, "as for Oracle’s third quarter, sales of new software licenses for products that run on-premises fell 11% year over year. That on-premises category makes up 70% of Oracle’s overall revenue, so there’s reason for concern there." 

Also, when you check the above Gartner Magic Quadrant figure, you will find out Gartner placed Microsoft ahead of Oracle within the LEADERS's quadrant. It is not because of the market share of RDBMS, but the result of Microsoft's recent investments in its data platform, including Azure DocumentDB, the managed NoSQL database in the cloud. Microsoft SQL Server is also popular not only on-premises but in the cloud. In May, Microsoft also announced the SQL Server will soon be available on Linux.

On the other front,  Amazon which is considered as the absolute leader of cloud computing also grabs huge database market share and is surprisingly in the LEADERS's quadrant just below Oracle. As we all know, AWS offers Amazon RDS and Amazon DynamoDB. Last year, Amazon also launched its own database engine called Aurora as a new database service on the AWS cloud.

We don't even mention the competition from IBM (DB2) and SAP (SAP HANA) as well as other vendors like Teradata and tons of open source or NoSQL databases (MongoDB, Cassandra, CouchDB, etc.).

Oracle might still have years to collect money from its traditional RDBMS product and service, but Larry has to fight in the CLOUD. It matters.

Oracle runs to Cloud, where will DBA go? (1)

Although I didn't attend the Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco last year, I could still hear that word "CLOUD" loud and clear. On December 2, 2015, I joined the Oracle Cloud Day in Toronto.

As Larry posted in his slide, 2015 was "A Year of Innovation in the Cloud".

• Oracle goes all in on cloud services by ComputerWorld

• Yes, Oracle is finally serious about the cloud by InfoWorld

In 2015, Oracle was all about cloud. How about 2016?

• Oracle Exec: All Our Apps Will Be Cloud Apps by Fortune

• Oracle’s New Service Turns Cloud Computing ‘Inside-Out’ by The Wall Street Journal

On April 11, Larry Ellison talked with CFOs and HR leaders on the Virtuous Circle of Cloud Innovation in Chicago.

The Oracle OpenWorld 2016 is still months away, I can almost be certain it will be almost if not all about cloud.

If Oracle runs full speed to Cloud, what will Oracle DBAs need to prepare?