Self-driving Oracle coming, so where will be the driver (DBA)?

Did you attend Oracle OpenWorld this year and listen to the keynote speech from Larry? If no, did you watch the following recorded keynote video?

Yes. It was all about Oracle Autonomous Database, the World's #1 Self-Driving Database. Certainly, Larry didn't forget to poke Amazon (AWS).

Not long ago, Oracle has changed its release schedule/name, so Oracle 12.2.0.2 becomes Oracle 18c.

Now it becomes clear, Oracle 18c is actually the foundation of  Oracle Autonomous Database service. As Oracle describes, "Powered by Oracle Database 18c, the next generation of the industry-leading database, Oracle Autonomous Database Cloud offers total automation based on machine learning and eliminates human labor, human error, and manual tuning."

Regarding the role change of Oracle DBA, there has never been one straight answer. With the recent announcement of self-driving database from Larry, the debate has been getting intense. So where will be driver? In other words, the Oracle DBA will totally disappear?

Tim has offered his thoughts about it 

Less time on boring shit. More time on important shit!

This is firmly targeted at removing the need for operational DBAs. A role that *you* should have already automated out of your organisation anyway. If you’ve not, then you have failed.

It should be obvious that the Development DBAs are sitting pretty here. The thinkers are safe. The recipe followers are not. Your mantra from now on should be…

Keep learning. Keep improving yourself. Keep your job!

and expressed his disappointment at the reaction to the Autonomous Database. 

"
As I expected, very few people seem to have actually listened to what was said in the keynote and I suspect many didn’t even read the entirety of my blog post. Instead, they saw “Autonomous Database” and launched into “it’ll never work” mode. It’s like people want it to fail and want to keep doing the same old boring crap for the rest of their lives. I am hopeful this suite of services will be the start of something interesting, but time will tell. Fingers crossed!"

Larry did provide his ideas on the "Database Professionals:  Evolution of Skill Set" in his keynote speech.

Another blog echoed the same reaction about the "Death of the Oracle DBA". 

The DBA role has changed. Indeed, if your Oracle DBAs are still spending significant time on things such as space and tablespace management then it’s time to look at how your Oracle DBA support is delivered! But for all the activities that have diminished or evaporated over the past 20 years new tasks and challenges have appeared. 

What do you think?

Oracle 12.2 available on cloud first

“Amazon’s lead is over. Amazon is going to have serious competition going forward. And we’re very proud of our second generation of Infrastructure as a Service. We’re going to be focusing on it and aggressively featuring it not only during Oracle OpenWorld but for the remainder of this fiscal year and next fiscal year and the year after that.” said Oracle Executive Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison in his opening keynote presentation at Oracle OpenWorld 2016.

  

What about Oracle’s new second-generation datacenters? According to Larry, it will offer twice as many cores as Amazon, twice as much memory as Amazon, 4 times as much storage as Amazon, and more than 10 times the I/O capacity of Amazon. Not only that, in order to get your order, Larry also promised you will pay less (than that paid to Amazon).

Is Oracle still a database company? Yes. It still sells its Oracle databases including Oracle Database 12c Release 2, aka, Oracle 12.2. But this time, Larry told the audience, “You will see as we develop features for the cloud, we’ll also start delivering our software in the cloud first. Clearly it’s going to go on-premises, but the first deployment of our database and a lot of our software now is going to go to the cloud first.”No surprise, the latest release Oracle 12.2 was officially announced to be first made available in the cloud. By checking Oracle website, there is no schedule yet for the on-premises version.

As I mentioned in my another article, Oracle has been working hard to convince customers to move to the cloud. Under current strategy, it makes sense for Oracle to attract more customers especially new ones into its cloud service. With its new push into IaaS market against Amazon, Oracle will need more applications and software running on its powerful and cheap infrastructure including its own latest software like Oracle 12c database. By doing this, Oracle will not only demonstrate the new software’s features and functions, but also fully test and fix its new software before shipping its on-premises version.

If your company has used Oracle Exadata machine, you know Oracle had developed “secret sauce” (software function) just for its own hardware to gain more performance. We can then expect Oracle to run its own software much better on its own cloud infrastructure than on other cloud platforms like Amazon.

However, the majority of Oracle’s revenue still came from its non-cloud business. Unlike Amazon, who generated its cloud business revenue from zero (without any legacy non-cloud IT services), Oracle might experience some sort of pain when cloud service eating some of its existing business.

No choice. Amazon is there, so is Microsoft. Larry knows he has to win in the cloud. “Oracle competes at all three levels of the cloud, all three tiers of the cloud.” he said in his keynote speech.

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?

What will Larry talk about in his keynote speech at OOW 2014?

Still as Oracle CEO, in his keynote speech at Oracle OpenWorld 2013, Larry Ellison, announced "Oracle Database 12c In-Memory Database and M6 Big Memory Machine".  In the Content Catalog for OOW 2014, there will be lots of sessions talking about in-memory option like the one (Top Five Things to Know About Oracle Database In-Memory) by Maria Colgan.

To go back one more year, at OOW 2012, after telling the crowd about Oracle Cloud 2012, Larry announced Oracle Database 12c and next generation Exadata Database Machine.

On September 18, Larry stepped aside  as Oracle CEO. As a Chairman and CTO, what important announcement will he deliver to the world in this year's OOW keynote speech?

From Forbes'article "Larry Ellison Is Still Here And 7 More Things About Oracle" written by Michael Hickins, a director of strategic communications at Oracle, we can get the taste of Larry's coming speech.

"... the company will roll out its new Database Cloud Service — a new multi-tenant database-as-a-service offering that will let customers migrate their existing apps and databases to the cloud “with the push of a button,” said Ellison. Data will be compressed ten to one and encrypted for secure and efficient transfer to the cloud, with no reprogramming. “Every single Oracle feature — even our latest high-speed in-memory processing — is included in the Oracle Cloud Database Service,” Ellison said. “Hundreds of thousands of customers and ISVs have been waiting for exactly this. Database is our largest software business and database will be our largest cloud service business.” "