After 46 years of ascending existence, Oracle has finally reached 50,000 million dollars in turnover (46,000 million euros). With little noise, except to promise that in 2026 there will be 65,000 million. It is a major change in its long history: services are gaining ground on software licenses. It is the new delivery model that is metaphorically known as the cloud. In just a few years, the company has managed to position itself among the leaders of this model, with two aspects: infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and two families of applications –Fusion and NetSuite–, today typical examples of software as a service (SaaS).
The numbers confirm this trend, which on the other hand is general: Oracle's revenues from cloud services grew by 47% in the fiscal year ended in May, while the billing for software licenses – still ahead in absolute figures – closed the year with a round number of increases: 0%.
Albert Triola, general director of Oracle Spain, has more reasons to celebrate these days: the start-up of a cloud region in Spain (number 42 in the world) which, directly connected to another in Germany, will function as a single sovereign cloud for the 27 member countries of the EU. The Spanish part is already operational in Madrid through a Telefónica infrastructure sharing agreement. With them, Oracle tries to respond to a very real demand: the concerns of governments and companies in regulated sectors regarding the location of data within the EU and how it is protected.
"I know that conspicuous Spanish clients were waiting for it and this novelty reassures them: a secure cloud region, with guarantees of quality and continuity, who know where it is physically and in which not only Oracle is involved, but also comes hand in hand with a partner like Telefónica –Summarizes Triola–, and if we have insisted on doing it this way, it is because we have analyzed it with the Spanish and European authorities until we made sure that our vision of technological sovereignty corresponded to their strategies”.
Initiatives like this sovereign cloud, a consequence of the GDPR (European regulation on data protection), mandatory since May 2018, are in tune with another profound change in public perception about Oracle. "Companies and administrations know the experience of this company that has led the database market for four decades -he points out-, and for them we now have an autonomous database in the cloud, which nobody else has, which is capable of self-management and self-repair and is associated with our full stack recovery technology in case of incidents. If something has changed in the IT landscape, it is that more and more data is generated every moment that influences decision-making, but at the same time, the more data they generate, the more problems appear”.
Triola does not observe that there is a stoppage in IT investments in Spain. Although he participates, like his clients, in a reflection on the need to make spending more flexible and optimize. "Nobody, absolutely nobody, has told me 'I don't have a budget for this, call me next year'".
The last quarter of the fiscal year has shown the first results of the largest acquisition that Oracle has made: the company Cerner, for which it paid 28,000 million dollars (25,000 million euros) and which, nine months later, already represents 11% of the company's total turnover. Renamed Oracle Health, its relevance consists in the fact that with it it will be possible to delve into a vertical sector of obvious importance: health.
