Oracle and Intel on Tuesday announced a joint effort to accelerate enterprise readiness for cloud computing and make it more efficient and secure. The companies also plan to identify and drive standards to breed flexible deployment across private and public clouds.
Cloud computing is an efficient way to run programs and store data that a large number of users can access through Internet technologies. Oracle and Intel already have common ground in the enterprise, where customers are running applications on shared infrastructure within their firewalls using Intel Virtualization Technology and Oracle Grid Computing technologies. This foundation sets the stage for private clouds of internal applications, as well as the ability to extend them to public, multi-tenant clouds, according to the companies.
“Oracle understands that enterprises would like the flexibility of choosing to run their enterprise systems in either private or public clouds, but in order to do that, cloud computing needs to be highly efficient, secure and standards-based,” said Robert Shimp, group vice president of the Oracle Global Technology Business Unit. “Intel and Oracle are collaborating to make this happen.”
Efficiency, Security and Standards
Oracle and Intel will cooperate in three broad areas: efficiency, security and standards.
The companies point to a 17 percent performance increase for Oracle databases running virtualized on Intel Xeon processors. Oracle and Intel will continue working together to drive additional performance and power-efficiency gains.
Security is also a hot-button issue for enterprises running software in public clouds. Companies want assurances that the environment is secure and private data is only accessible by authorized users, Oracle and Intel said. Activities also need to be tracked for auditing and compliance reporting. Oracle and Intel have pledged to work together to strengthen virtual-machine security in shared cloud environments.
Finally, Intel and Oracle will join with other industry leaders to extend standards that enable portability…