Oracle joins the in-memory crowd

Will Oracle's in-memory option for Database 12c pose a serious threat to SAP HANA, asks Peter Gothard

As Larry Ellison’s Team Oracle USA super schooner thrust its way ahead of rivals New Zealand out on San Francisco Bay, the Oracle CEO was seeking a similar burst of competitive speed back on dry land, in a downtown conference centre.

At this year’s OpenWorld 2013, the focus of Ellison’s keynote was the announcement of in-memory processing for the company’s Database 12c product and, conceivably, a hefty blow against German database firm SAP.

Claiming a “better idea” than the current industry convention of storing database data in columns or rows – that of storing it “simultaneously” in both formats – Ellison boasted that Oracle’s way is the only way. He said the mixed format storage could help do away with analytics indices, meaning data could be processed in-memory “100 times faster” (than what – Oracle’s older products, or rival products – was not discussed), claiming that in-memory processing would be a touch-button option for 12c that would cause no change to SQL, existing applications, or anything else.

Barely three years ago Ellison infamously described in-memory as “wacko”, saying: “In-memory databases? Yes, SAP is going after this. We missed it and IBM missed it, and it’s good that SAP CEO Hasso [Plattner] and his five guys in a garage got it. It’s wacko.”

It’s understandable why this U-turn may have riled SAP who, in the hours after the announcement, uploaded a video blog featuring SAP executive board member Vishal Sikka.

“When I heard about Oracle’s pre-announcement, my only thought for them was ‘Mr Ellison, why did it take you four years after you called us wackos to do more of the same thing you have always done?’” said Sikka on the blog.

“Welcome to the party – the good news is you are now a believer in in-memory databases, but guess what? We have already changed the game. We are already onto the next frontiers,” he added.

Small signs, apparently penned by SAP on a similar “four years late” theme, also began appearing around San Francisco’s Moscone conference centre, the OpenWorld venue.

Oracle president Mark Hurd hit back, telling journalists: “I don’t like it when in-memory gets compared to SAP HANA, because I don’t think they’re comparable. SAP HANA has to be programmed, what we told you about has nothing to do with all that.

“It’s moving your current apps from here to there, and flipping the switch. All the magic is below the database layer. This thing of where you have to go and write a whole bunch of new software is very hard and very complicated. So I refute the thesis it’s even a comparison.”

While it’s fair to say that Oracle has had in-memory products for a while, these have been for specific functions – Coherence, a distributed data grid solution, being a good example.

Constellation Research analyst R “Ray” Wang told Computing: “Basically, what Oracle did was they gave existing apps customers, existing database customers and existing cloud customers the ability to just go in-memory overnight, and that was it. Traditionally, that’s a very hard thing to do.”

Wang expects Oracle’s product to be fast, due to its row and column storage method, and that running cost will be comparatively low. Oracle, said Wang, has a reputation for “commoditising innovation”, and 12c in-memory is just another example.

“They’ll take whatever’s new, they’ll think about it, they’ll let people go ahead as far as they get, and then at one point they’ll say ‘Fine, we’ll do it, too’, and when they do that, they drop all the cost against it,” said Wang.

Gartner analyst Dennis Gaughan believes that Oracle’s potential ability to undercut SAP HANA’s costs could conceivably win it new customers from the German firm, but only in specific circumstances.

Oracle joins the in-memory crowd

Will Oracle's in-memory option for Database 12c pose a serious threat to SAP HANA, asks Peter Gothard

“The two companies are always compared to one another, so it’s inevitable, but fundamentally in-memory is about putting processing core data in memory performance. SAP has one approach, Oracle has now announced a different method.

“But a majority of SAP clients are using Oracle Database as the underpinnings for SAP Business suite. So I’d perhaps see Oracle trying to position the in-memory capability as a way to get performance improvement without having to migrate off the platform.”

Gaughan said SAP isn’t going to be selling HANA as a replacement for the underlying Oracle database. “That’s not their strategy. So it’s SAP running on Oracle [Database] where you’ll see the competition,” he argued.

However, Wang’s view of the “big picture” for both companies, in a world of increasing virtualisation, is that both SAP and Oracle are saying: “If you’re in the cloud, we really don’t care what database you’re on.”

To try to gauge SAP’s true feelings towards Oracle’s in-memory moves, Computing sat down with the company’s UK chief innovation officer, Adrian Simpson.

Like Hurd, Simpson insisted that, as the two methods are different, comparison can only be made at a basic level of “trying to solve the database”, adding that “rhetoric from Oracle that says ‘it’s 100 times faster, or 10, or 20 or 400 times’ – it’s an academic, meaningless argument”.

“Where we do differentiate is what we do with the appliance of the database, and what we’ve said is it’s not about the database, it’s about the appliances put on it,” Simpson explained.

“Where we’ve been putting our development effort is in building business value from technology in order to make business processes and analytics run faster, and bring new, innovative solutions to market that we couldn’t before, because technology has been a blocker.”

Simpson added that while “everybody else is focused on making the analytics run faster [this was a major part of Ellison’s keynote], there’s all this other stuff that’s more of interest and provides more business value”.

When asked to specify, Simpson cited the process of ending a financial year, claiming that SAP customer Vodafone saved around $600,000 on people and resources by running it through SAP HANA.

Turning to hardware, many industry watchers argue that Oracle’s fundamental weakness is its reliance on its own big iron – such as Exadata and Exalytics appliances – at a time when enterprises are increasingly turning to commodity hardware.

Simpson believes this is another area where SAP can overtake Oracle.

“It’s about where this scales up to, and for some time now we’ve been working with vendors on something,” he said.

“We worked with IBM in our research labs in Belfast, we got a load of tin together, with some very clever PhD people, a bit of soldering iron and some software, and built a big machine – and asked how that could become a commodity.

“We asked, ‘How can we really scale this up?’ When we came out with HANA it was 500MB of RAM, now we’re talking about 100TB. So it’s about now making that kind of power available to people.”

Simpson believes on-premise database systems will be around for some time yet.

“What we’re seeing is people now have much more of a choice in how they deploy things, but the cloud isn’t the way for everyone. And I don’t see it going that way soon.

“Security is one aspect of it, but for some people just having control over their infrastructure is important to them. So one aspect is availability. We have the stories of unavailable systems, Amazon’s had a problem, Salesforce has, Google has, and it causes pain to customers.”

Simpson also believes that start-ups, who don’t need to keep supporting infrastructure and legacy systems that depend on on-premise, have “more choice”, but must still look at the type of business they run to rule out on-premise altogether.

Computing asks if this is just a matter of time. As consumers learned to toss out DVDs and move to Netflix, won’t younger, hipper SMEs lead the way and embrace the cloud-only model?

“I support that analogy but, on the other hand – vinyl’s making a comeback,” laughs Simpson.

As Oracle treads on SAP’s software toes, could SAP really be planning a returning kick up Oracle’s hardware? Only time will tell but, if Simpson’s words can be interpreted that way, it could be a solid indicator that 12c’s in-memory announcement may have hurt more than the bragging video blogs and cheeky conference signs suggest.

@PeterGothard