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Zoom taps Oracle for cloud deal, passing over Amazon, Microsoft

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Re: Zoom taps Oracle for cloud deal, passing over Amazon, Microsoft

#101
post #88

Do people questioning the intentions of this move, have actual experience using Oracle cloud? It seems that people really eat the marketing that AWS/GCP/Azure are the best cloud provider for every single product. Oracle Cloud's perception is in the gutter, and it's all press. It's very possible that they have a competitive cloud service. They were making some decent offers for talent last time I checked.

From what I've heard, the top talent they are hiring are not being allowed to actually do anything useful. They are getting paid to be in the PR. Maybe someone who actually works on Oracle cloud can jump in here and clarify.

> Maybe someone who actually works on Oracle cloud can jump in here and clarify.

I'd love to, and I'm sure others would as well, but I'm not sure what can be said that wouldn't run afoul of legal.

Re: Zoom taps Oracle for cloud deal, passing over Amazon, Microsoft

#102
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we have a free $300 Credit and also Always Free Cloud Services just like other Cloud Vendors, give it a shot. (PS I work at Oracle). https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/

I have lots of mini projects, so I am game to try it. Any cool things I might want to play with on there?

Try serveless function, how about moving your personal blog and website to always free tier?

Re: Zoom taps Oracle for cloud deal, passing over Amazon, Microsoft

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is simply, they don't want to fund their own competitors. Microsoft is a direct competitor already (so is Google,) and who knows what Amazon will do. That really only leaves IBM and Oracle. I've always been baffled when someone hosts on their competitors' platform. Like Netflix hosting on AWS, and Grocery Stores hosting on AWS. Microsoft & Google rarely have that problem (except on this one.)

If the amount of revenue you are going to give is a rounding error for AWS, you are not going to move the needle on the funding of their other projects. This should be a non-factor in your decision-making process.

You're right, in that the revenue of an incremental customer is negligible to them.

However, as a customer dependent on that particular vendor, one wants to make sure that their cloud provider has no perverse incentive to deprioritize issues one encounters.

Re: Zoom taps Oracle for cloud deal, passing over Amazon, Microsoft

#105
post #71

Why? Is it because of cost? Perhaps nepotism? I don' see a reason why Amazon or Azure would be passed over in favour of Oracle. Why wasn't GCP a contender either? Something seems fishy... someone from Zoom care to chime in? Maybe they are afraid that Amazon or Microsoft with their tradition of copying competition would pose a threat? Even then, Microsoft is already competing using Microsoft Teams and if Amazon wanted…

I migrated the company's services from AWS to OCI at the startup I was at. The trade-off is simple, if Oracle can say $product runs on OCI, they'll put you in front of the biggest industry players who are using their POS, database - and since our sales pipeline pivoted around web integrations this was crucial. They also give a bunch of credits (as do the other providers). We argued against it in the dev team, but it…

This is great to hear, thanks for providing ground truth.

Re: Zoom taps Oracle for cloud deal, passing over Amazon, Microsoft

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. That’s news to me. Walmart is so calculated.

It's just smart business. Your random SaaS company is often a big shitshow. I've had more than one vendor Sales Engineer show me live customer data in response to performance or other questions. Startups and smaller SaaS companies in particular often demonstrate amazing levels of cluelessness.

I had that happen today.

Re: Zoom taps Oracle for cloud deal, passing over Amazon, Microsoft

#107

Why? Is it because of cost? Perhaps nepotism? I don' see a reason why Amazon or Azure would be passed over in favour of Oracle. Why wasn't GCP a contender either? Something seems fishy... someone from Zoom care to chime in? Maybe they are afraid that Amazon or Microsoft with their tradition of copying competition would pose a threat? Even then, Microsoft is already competing using Microsoft Teams and if Amazon wanted…

Worth noting (from the article):

> Zoom already uses Amazon and Microsoft’s cloud services, but went with Oracle for its latest expansion.

Remember that Oracle’s Capex spending on cloud is very small compared to AWS, Azure and GCP. Given Zoom’s growth it’s not likely they’ll choose an also-ran in the public cloud market as their sole supplier.

Increasing optionality and maybe some access to Oracle marketing is likely a bigger reason.

Re: Zoom taps Oracle for cloud deal, passing over Amazon, Microsoft

#108

Why? Is it because of cost? Perhaps nepotism? I don' see a reason why Amazon or Azure would be passed over in favour of Oracle. Why wasn't GCP a contender either? Something seems fishy... someone from Zoom care to chime in? Maybe they are afraid that Amazon or Microsoft with their tradition of copying competition would pose a threat? Even then, Microsoft is already competing using Microsoft Teams and if Amazon wanted…

> I don' see a reason why Amazon or Azure would be passed over in favour of Oracle. Why wasn't GCP a contender either? Because Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are competitors to Zoom. Why would you host on your competitor ?!

In a world of multinational conglomerates, it’s very common for a business to have a supplier that is owned by the owner of a competitor in a different line of business.

Re: Zoom taps Oracle for cloud deal, passing over Amazon, Microsoft

#109
I worked in a startup that was eventually acquired by cisco. We had the same dilemma back then. AWS and GCP were great, but also fairly expensive until you get locked in. Oracles bare metal cloud sweetened the deal soo much, that it was a no brainer to go with them. We were very heavy on using all open source tech stuff, but didnt rely on any cloud service like S3 etc. So the transition was no brainer.

If your tech stack is not reliant on cloud services like S3 etc, you're better off with a cloud provider who can give you those sweet deals. But you'll need in house expertise to deal with big data.

Re: Zoom taps Oracle for cloud deal, passing over Amazon, Microsoft

#110

Why? Is it because of cost? Perhaps nepotism? I don' see a reason why Amazon or Azure would be passed over in favour of Oracle. Why wasn't GCP a contender either? Something seems fishy... someone from Zoom care to chime in? Maybe they are afraid that Amazon or Microsoft with their tradition of copying competition would pose a threat? Even then, Microsoft is already competing using Microsoft Teams and if Amazon wanted…

Yes, the technology behind zoom can be repicated in less than 2 years and for less than 100m.

The marketing spend would cost way more than to catch up in mindshare though.

The brand name "Zoom" is easily worth $100M on it's own now.

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