News Archives - Vertice

UCD Customer Success Story

colmmccarthy — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 13:06:26 +0000

Introduction

We often talk about the power of data, but how often do we get to see it directly improving a patient’s quality of life? We’re excited to share a fantastic example of AI in action with University College Dublin (UCD).

The Challenge: The 10-Minute Appointment

For patients living with chronic conditions like asthma or COPD, a doctor’s appointment can be a stressful 10-minute window. How can they possibly summarize months of symptoms, flare-ups, and daily experiences in such a short time? This information gap can lead to frustration for patients and inconsistent data for clinicians.

The Solution: A Patient-Led Companion App

To solve this, UCD and Vertice developed a  patient-led companion app. This app empowers patients to record their experiences as they happen, using their own voice. But it’s more than just a diary. The app intelligently combines the patient’s qualitative narrative (“I felt breathless this morning”) with quantitative, open-source data like local pollen counts and weather conditions. This creates a complete, clinically useful picture of the patient’s health over time.

Why the Oracle AI Data Platform (AIDP) Was Key

The entire solution was built and piloted in record time by leveraging the Oracle AI Data Platform.

According to UCD, the platform was crucial for several reasons:

Accelerated Development: The platform’s AI tools sped up the creation of the chatbot and reporting functions.
Standardization: Its open framework allowed the team to standardize diverse data types using common data models.
Security & Governance: When dealing with sensitive patient data, trust is non-negotiable. The security and governance built into the AIDP were a key differentiator, providing a secure platform for the solution as it scales.

The Impact: Empowered Patients, Better Care

Patients feel empowered and heard, helping them better manage their own conditions. Clinicians get a rich, structured dataset that helps them provide a better, more proactive standard of care.

UCD and Vertice are already looking at scaling this solution, expanding to other chronic diseases and even enhancing clinical trials.

It’s a powerful reminder of what’s possible when great partnerships are formed and technology is utilised to solve real-world problems.

connect@verticecloud.com

Vertice

Customer. Data. Solutions.

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Introducing Oracle AI Data Platform

colmmccarthy — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 13:48:00 +0000

Author: Philip Godfrey

Unveiled at Oracle AI World in Las Vegas, the Oracle AI Data Platform helps customers accelerate AI initiatives with secure, unified data and agentic automation.

With this release, Oracle advances its “AI for Data” vision by architecting AI and data together to provide trusted insight, innovation and productivity across both operational systems and analytic data lakes.

What is Oracle AI Data Platform?

Oracle AI Data Platform, now generally available is the most comprehensive AI enabled platform by Oracle to date.

It seamlessly integrates multiple OCI services across data, analytics & AI, into a cohesive experience, that accelerates the building, deployment and scaling of AI powered applications.

Oracle AI Data Platform enables customers to get their data ready for AI and then leverage AI to transform every business process.¹

T.K. Anand - Executive Vice President, Oracle

Oracle Database 23ai established the foundation; 26ai consolidates and elevates it into a cohesive, AI-native platform for production workloads at scale.²

What can customers use AI Data Platform for?

Below are just some selected feature highlights² at the time of writing.

Data Discovery & Governance – AI Data Platform provides a metadata repository (Master Catalog) that enhances searchability of artifacts (structured / unstructured)

Integrate External Data – leverage other data assets through an external catalog, allowing connections to AI Data Lakehouse or Object Storage, all in one place.
Accelerate Data Preparation and Processing: With built-in notebooks and workflow orchestration, users can clean, transform, and enrich data efficiently.

Medallion Architecture – developers can navigate through Bronze, Silver and Gold Medallion architectures, within AI Data Platform, providing full data lineage within the platform.

Support Advanced Analytics and AI/ML: AI Data Platform integrates with Apache Spark, allowing data scientists and analysts to run complex computations and model training directly within their data lake.
Enable Secure Data Collaboration: Through RBAC-based access control, AI Data Platform allows different teams to work on shared datasets while maintaining strict security policies.
Business Intelligence & Reporting: Connect Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC) and third-party BI tools via JDBC like Tableau or Power BI.

Who is the AI Data Platform for?

Work with large-scale data pipelines, transforming raw data into usable formats for analysis.

Make use of Oracle’s Gen AI services, including foundational LLMs and open-model libraries

Leverage AI Data Platform’s scalable compute capabilities for machine learning and advanced analytics tasks

manage metadata, enforce role-based access controls (RBAC), and ensure proper governance through cataloguing and security policies.

Interested to know more?

We’d be more than happy to discuss your requirements or questions, please get in touch here.

[1] https://www.oracle.com/news/announcement/ai-world-oracle-unveils-ai-data-platform-empowering-customers-to-innovate-in-the-ai-era-2025-10-14/

[2] https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/paas/ai-data-platform/aidug/overview-oracle-ai-data-platform.html#GUID-5BA875DE-DF8E-4A92-8E43-18FFB2906B40

connect@verticecloud.com

Philip Godfrey

Principal AI & Data Analytics Consultant

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Enhancing AI in the database: Introducing Oracle AI Database 26ai

colmmccarthy — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 09:59:00 +0000

Author: Philip Godfrey

Unveiled at Oracle AI World in Las Vegas, Oracle AI Database 26ai, the next-generation long-term support release of its flagship database, architects AI at the core of the database.

What is Oracle AI Database 26ai?

Oracle AI Database 26ai is a long-term support release that replaces Oracle Database 23ai.

It enables AI across the entire data and development stack, making for faster development, tighter integration, and endless possibilities. including AI Vector Search, AI for Database Management, AI for Data Development, AI for Application Development, and AI for Analytics.

You even see this dedication to AI in the renaming, a further nod to its Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities.

Oracle Database 23ai -> Oracle AI Database 26ai

We enable our customers to easily deliver trusted AI insights, innovations, and productivity for all their data, everywhere, including both operational systems and analytic data lakes.¹

Juan Loaiza (Oracle) - Executive Vice President, Oracle Database Technologies

Oracle Database 23ai established the foundation; 26ai consolidates and elevates it into a cohesive, AI-native platform for production workloads at scale.²

What key features³ enable AI developers within AI Database 26ai?

Oracle have added new AI innovations across AI Vector Search, AI for Database Management, AI Data Development, AI for Analytics and AI App Development.

Below are just selected highlights focused on developers. However, all these enhancements are on top of what was delivered in Oracle Database 23ai.

Private AI Services
Container

Prebuilt environment for running private instances of AI Models (embedding, open-weight LLMs) to avoid sharing data with third-party AI providers.

Enhanced AI Vector Search

Oracle AI Vector Search is designed for AI workloads, allowing developers to query data based on semantics, rather than keywords.

Unified Data Model
Unified data models for relational, JSON and graph data simplified. Accelerating developer productivity to access data.

Enhanced AI Vector Search

AI Vector Search enables unstructured data (such as documents, videos, and images) to be quickly searched, using a new data representation called vectors.

Users can now combine business data and vectors to answer user queries without moving or synchronizing data or managing multiple products.

The key advantage of having AI Vector Search built into the Oracle Database is that every mission-critical feature of Oracle Database works transparently with AI vectors.

You automatically get all the industrial-strength scalability, consistency, availability, security, and performance you have come to rely on with Oracle Database. Because of this, you can safely use AI Vector Search in the same customer-facing applications that you use Oracle Database for today.⁴

Unified Data Model

The relational, JSON, and graph data models have been unified, providing massive simplification. This accelerates developer productivity by enabling applications to access the same data in relational format via SQL, as a JSON document, or as a graph.

Great AI needs great data. With Oracle AI Database 26ai, customers get both. It’s the single place where their business data lives—current, consistent, and secure. And it’s the best place to use AI on that data without moving it.

Holger Mueller - Vice President and principal analyst, Constellation Research

With more developments planned and the integration of AI within the database, we really are at a moment in time where rapid development and problem solving with AI has gone from aspirational to achievable, all with the help of 26ai.

How do customers access 26ai?

Customers can simply apply the October 2025 release update to go from 23ai to 26ai. You will receive the immediately available features and as this is a long-term support release, it’s ready for production workloads. There is no database upgrade or application re-certification required and advanced AI features, such as AI Vector Search, are included at no additional charge.⁵

What about on-premises users?

Oracle have announced that on-premises community will also be able to access Oracle AI Database 26ai Enterprise Edition for Linux x86-64 in January 2026, as part of the quarterly Release Update (version 23.26.1)⁶

This much-anticipated milestone brings the full power of 26ai to your data centres.

Interested to know more?

We’d be more than happy to discuss your requirements or questions, please get in touch here.

[1] https://www.oracle.com/uk/news/announcement/ai-world-database-26ai-powers-the-ai-for-data-revolution-2025-10-14/

[2] https://blogs.oracle.com/database/post/oracle-announces-oracle-ai-database-26ai

[3] https://www.oracle.com/uk/database/features/#foundational-ai

[4] oracle-ai-database-26ai-new-features-guide.pdf

[5] https://blogs.oracle.com/database/post/oracle-announces-oracle-ai-database-26ai

[6] https://blogs.oracle.com/database/oracle-ai-database-26ai-coming-soon-for-linux-x86-64-on-premises-platforms

connect@verticecloud.com

Philip Godfrey

Principal Data Analytics & AI Consultant at Vertice

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Vertice Achieves World First Fusion Data Intelligence Specialisation

colmmccarthy — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 15:26:33 +0000

Vertice Achieves World-First Expertise in Oracle Fusion Data Intelligence

Vertice is proud to announce a new global milestone: we are officially the first Oracle partner worldwide to achieve Specialisation in Oracle Fusion Data Intelligence. This distinction reinforces our position at the forefront of data-driven transformation and highlights our commitment to unlocking the next generation of business insights for our clients.

The Fusion Data Intelligence (FDI) Specialisation is awarded by Oracle exclusively to partners who demonstrate deep functional expertise, successful real-world deployments, and sustained delivery capability using Oracle’s most advanced analytics platform. It’s formal recognition of both our technical proficiency and our practical experience in deploying FDI to drive business outcomes.

What This Means for Our Customers:

Unified Business Intelligence – Our clients can now benefit from enterprise-wide reporting and AI-powered analytics, accelerated by Vertice’s direct experience in FDI delivery. From Finance to HR to Supply Chain, we’re helping businesses leverage 360° data models and intelligent apps for insight and action.
Enterprise-Grade Delivery – This specialisation validates our ability to implement FDI at scale, ensuring data governance, semantic modelling, and AI integration meet Oracle’s highest technical standards.
First-Mover Advantage – As the first partner globally to achieve FDI expertise, Vertice is uniquely positioned to help clients capitalise on Fusion Data Intelligence capabilities ahead of the curve-delivering insight-led transformation with confidence.

This achievement is the result of focused investment, rigorous certification, and proven delivery success across multiple industries. Every member of our FDI practice has contributed to this world-first milestone, and we’re proud to celebrate their expertise and dedication.

As data intelligence evolves into the strategic core of modern enterprises, this specialisation cements our role as the leading partner for Fusion Data Intelligence implementation and advisory services. We’re excited to help our clients accelerate their data-driven journeys.

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Vertice Achieves CSSE:AI & Machine Learning Expertise

colmmccarthy — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 12:19:00 +0000

Vertice First in EMEA & APAC to Achieve CSSE:AI & Machine Learning Expertise

Vertice is proud to announce that we have officially achieved Cloud Service Solution Expertise (CSSE) in AI & Machine Learning. This milestone not only reflects our continued investment in innovation but also marks a historic first: Vertice is the first Oracle partner across EMEA and APAC to earn this prestigious recognition.

The CSSE:AI certification is awarded by Oracle to partners who demonstrate deep technical proficiency, real-world delivery success, and a sustained commitment to developing and deploying AI-driven solutions in the cloud. It’s a validation of both our team’s capability and our track record in delivering measurable results using Oracle AI services and infrastructure.

What This Means for Our Customers:

Tangible Innovation – Customers can expect solutions that go beyond experimentation. We deploy AI and ML where it actually delivers value — whether that’s anomaly detection, intelligent document processing, or predictive analytics.
Enterprise-Ready Execution – CSSE:AI recognition confirms we operate to Oracle’s highest technical and delivery standards, ensuring robust governance, model lifecycle management, and scalable architecture.
First-Mover Advantage – As the first in EMEA and APAC with this expertise, Vertice is uniquely positioned to help clients capitalise on AI opportunities ahead of the curve, backed by proven methodologies and a delivery-first approach.

This achievement is the result of relentless focus, certification efforts, and the successful delivery of AI use cases by our talented team. Every member of the Vertice AI delivery practice has played a role in reaching this point, and we thank them for their continued excellence.

As AI becomes increasingly central to cloud strategy, this recognition reaffirms Vertice’s role as a trusted advisor and implementation partner. We’re excited about what this means for our clients and the solutions we can now accelerate together.

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A Fresh Look at OCI: Exploring the New Oracle Cloud Interface and User Experience

colmmccarthy — Wed, 18 Dec 2024 12:15:15 +0000

Introduction

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) has recently unveiled an updated user interface, giving the platform a refreshed look and feel. For both seasoned cloud architects and new users, the modernized layout improves navigation, usability, and efficiency while maintaining the robustness of OCI’s core services. Let’s take a deep dive into what’s new, what’s improved, and how you can benefit from this streamlined experience.

1. A Clean and Intuitive Layout

Upon logging into OCI, users are welcomed with a cleaner, Home Dashboard that prioritises resources and tasks.

The interface provides a better-organized “Resources” section on the left and an action-oriented “Build” section on the right.

My Recently Viewed: A dynamic section that shows the resources you’ve interacted with the most. This is helpful for quickly accessing your most critical workloads without digging through menus.
Build Actions: Right from the home screen, you can spin up essential OCI resources like:
- Compute: Create VM instances in just 2-6 minutes.
- Database Services: Easily set up Autonomous Transaction Processing (ATP) or Autonomous Data Warehousing (ADW) within 3-5 minutes.
- Networking: Configure networking setups quickly with guided wizards (2-3 minutes).

The new layout eliminates clutter and reduces the time needed to perform common tasks, allowing users to focus more on managing and scaling workloads.

2. Focus on Performance and Customisation

Oracle has emphasised both system health and user control with this update.

Performance Insights: The “Normal performance” badge, visible at the top right, offers real-time health updates on OCI services. This provides users confidence that their services are operating optimally.
Customisation: A dedicated “Customise” button allows users to personalize their home screen, pin essential resources, and streamline their view based on day-to-day requirements.

This focus on transparency and flexibility ensures that users of varying skill levels can tailor OCI to fit their needs.

3. Enhanced Resource Management

OCI’s new interface improves resource organisation:

Resource Explorer: A single pane to find, manage, and organize infrastructure resources across your tenancy. Whether it’s compute instances, networking components, or databases, everything is accessible with just a few clicks.
Streamlined Access: Tabs such as “Recently Created” and “Resource Collections” further simplify access to newly provisioned or grouped resources, speeding up day-to-day operations.

4. Modern Visuals for a Better User Experience

The updated OCI theme introduces cleaner visuals, improved typography, and better spacing to enhance readability and user engagement. The interface adopts a modern cloud aesthetic with subtle contrasts and minimalistic design elements, ensuring that navigation is simple, focused, and pleasing to the eye.

5. Quick Actions for Rapid Deployment

OCI has brought frequently-used deployment tasks to the forefront. With minimal navigation, you can quickly:

Spin up new VM instances for compute-intensive workloads.
Deploy Autonomous Databases (ATP and ADW) for simplified database management.
Launch Networking Wizards for quick connectivity solutions.

These guided workflows are especially beneficial for teams looking to reduce provisioning time and operational overhead.

Conclusion

The new Oracle Cloud Infrastructure layout is a significant step forward, combining a modern user experience with enhanced functionality. By streamlining workflows, improving resource visibility, and prioritizing quick actions, OCI ensures that users can get more done with less effort.

Whether you are managing virtual machines, databases, or networking resources, this new interface reflects Oracle’s commitment to user-centric design. If you haven’t already, log in to your OCI tenancy and explore the sleek, refreshed experience for yourself.

connect@verticecloud.com

Jason Beattie

Senior Architect at Vertice

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UKIOUG 2024 Awards

colmmccarthy — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 15:24:14 +0000

Vertice had an excellent night at the recent UKIOUG Community Awards event. It was great to see so many members of the Oracle User Community in the one place again and say hello to all.

We are also proud to have received both our customer nominations and even happier to have attained some wins and awards in our Oracle specialisms…

From all the team at Vertice – A sincere thanks to all our Customers, the dedicated Vertice team who made this possible, and UKIOUG for hosting such a great night for all involved!

connect@verticecloud.com

Vertice

Customer. Data. Solutions.

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Vertice Achieves ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Certification

colmmccarthy — Mon, 20 May 2024 09:41:04 +0000

Vertice Achieves ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Accreditation, Reinforcing Commitment to Data Security.

Vertice is proud to announce that we have officially achieved ISO/IEC 27001:2022 accreditation. A globally recognised standard for information security management. This significant milestone showcases our dedication to maintaining the highest standards in protecting sensitive data. While upholding information security best practices.

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 is a rigorous and comprehensive framework that outlines requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining, and continually improving an Information Security Management System (ISMS). This certification validates that we have implemented robust processes to identify, assess, and manage information security risks. Above all ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of our data and the data entrusted to us by our valued clients.

Benefits for our Valued Customers:

Enhanced Security: Customers can trust that their data is handled with the utmost care and protection. While at the same time adhering to internationally recognised security protocols. Our robust security measures minimise the risk of data breaches, unauthorised access, and other security incidents.
Improved Reliability: The rigorous processes required for ISO 27001:2022 certification ensure that our services maintain a high level of reliability and security. While providing customers with peace of mind and uninterrupted access to our solutions.
Greater Trust: Achieving ISO 27001:2022 demonstrates our commitment to transparency and trustworthiness. It reinforces our reputation as a reliable and dependable partner in the tech industry, dedicated to protecting the interests of our clients.

The journey to achieving ISO/IEC 27001:2022 accreditation has been a huge collaborative effort. With this in mind we extend our sincere gratitude to our exceptional team for their tireless dedication, expertise, and unwavering commitment to excellence. Their contributions have been instrumental in making this achievement possible.

We are excited about the opportunities this accreditation presents for Vertice and our customers. It reinforces our commitment to data security and assures our clients that their information is in safe hands.

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OCI Vision

colmmccarthy — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 10:59:49 +0000

Author: Philip Godfrey

What is OCI Vision?

OCI Vision serves as an advanced AI tool aimed at facilitating extensive image analysis powered by deep learning algorithms. It streamlines the process of integrating image and text recognition features into applications, eliminating the need for specialised knowledge in machine learning.

What does OCI Vision do?

Provides pretrained and customisable computer vision models to analyse image-based content.
You can upload images to detect and classify objects in them.
Complete integration with OCI Data Labelling simplifies data labelling.

OCI provides access to pretrained models, enabling users to develop custom models by uploading and training image classification models.
Subsequently, users can assess the metrics of custom models and deploy them seamlessly within Oracle Analytics Cloud for analysis of new image datasets.

This facilitates rapid innovation and seamless integration of results into an analytics platform. The combined utilisation of OAC and OCI Vision offers a versatile solution applicable across various industry use cases.

Pretrained Models:

Image Classification
Object Detection
Text Recognition

Custom Models:

Image Classification
Object Detection

Feature	Description	Common Applications / Examples
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) & Text Extraction	Extract textual features from documents, such as printed and handwritten documents	• Business reports in PDF form • Receipts and invoices • Insurance or other application forms
Table Extraction	Extract text in tabular format with row/column information per cell.	• Item-level details in receipts • Invoices • Purchase orders
Key-Value Extraction	Extracts key-value information based on a pre-trained model of common document types	• Invoices • Receipts • Passports / Driver Licence
Document Classification	Classifies documents into different types based on high-level features and extracted keywords.	• Receipt • Resume •Driver Licence

What are some use cases for Vision?¹

Insightful Analysis from Visual Data:

Leverage AI Vision to automatically extract textual or visual information from images, empowering analytical applications. By amalgamating visual data with supplementary inputs like product sales history and customer reviews, gain comprehensive insights into trends such as product availability and popularity.

Efficient Digital Asset Management:²

Enhance image-based files within Oracle Cloud Infrastructure AI Vision by enriching them with metadata, including object identification and colour classification. This facilitates superior indexing and retrieval within digital asset management systems or expansive data warehouses, enabling seamless image retrieval for diverse applications ranging from intelligent search to retail management.

Anomaly Detection in Visual Data:³

Utilise AI Vision to classify products or equipment as standard or defective based on visual cues like discoloration, tears, rust, deformities, or breaks. Automate the detection of anomalies to promptly flag defective materials, thereby expediting the need for repairs and maintenance.

Scene Monitoring and Object Localisation:

Leverage AI Vision to monitor scenes and identify specific elements within images. Detect the growth of vegetation near power lines or ascertain the availability of trucks at delivery lots by accurately locating objects and entire scenes within images. Whether localising particular objects within a scene or classifying the entire image, AI Vision offers precise scene analysis capabilities.

How to use AI Vision?

Interested to know more?

We’d be more than happy to discuss your requirements or questions, please get in touch here.

[1] https://www.oracle.com/uk/artificial-intelligence/vision/

[2] OCI Vision Overview – Exploring the service (Oracle Developers): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyJm7OlaRBk

[3] Anomaly detection in images (Oracle Learning): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy1T_3BeO4o

[4] https://www.oracle.com/uk/artificial-intelligence/vision/

connect@verticecloud.com

Philip Godfrey

Principal Data Analytics & AI Consultant at Vertice

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Exadata X10 – Why should you care?

colmmccarthy — Wed, 06 Mar 2024 14:27:08 +0000

Author: Cord Oestmann

It has now been a few months since Oracle announced the release of the latest (12^th) version of its flagship engineered system, the Exadata Database Machine X10. A quick web search for reviews reveals that Oracle Marketing-inspired analyst reviews dominate the space. Almost all of which emphasise the improved feeds and speeds. Don’t get me wrong, the uplift in the performance (OLTP 3x higher transaction and 3.6x higher analytics throughput) and storage (22% more hard drive capacity on the High Capacity storage servers) of the new version of Exadata is impressive when compared to the X9 model. The speed of processing and storage capacity provided by the Exadata platform are certainly not to be underestimated. Especially if those factors were your primary drivers for choosing it.

However, I would argue that the appeal of especially the compute performance already exceeds what a large number of users of the Oracle database would need or be able to appreciate. I suppose what I am asking myself is, why would anyone who has not yet adopted the technology consider it for their Oracle database implementation?

Exadata: The Journey

I have now accompanied the Exadata on its journey into customer land for more than 13 years. From its beginnings, as an optimised platform to support data warehouse projects on Oracle database, it morphed pretty quickly into something that Oracle invested a lot of time and budget in to make it the very best platform for running the Oracle database. Whether this was the plan from the outset or a consequence of the Sun Microsoft acquisition. Which also gave Oracle immediate access to hardware development, or just serendipity, I could not say.

Over the course of just a few years, Exadata established itself as the absolute go-to solution in the areas of high end data processing, analytics and transaction throughput for many enterprise customers. However, many users of the Oracle database did not follow this path for a variety of perfectly understandable reasons. Many customers cited the perceived high price as an objection to adopting the Exadata platform, in addition to its scale often exceeding their stated requirements for Oracle database environments. This is a difficult subject, as cost is a relative concept that depends heavily on the associated aspect of value, or even more precisely, a customer’s perception of value.

Oracle usually approach this topic by producing Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) models that almost invariably show a financial benefit of the Exadata over, for arguments sake, a competitor’s or customer in-house developed alternative infrastructure, often reliant on a more efficient Oracle database software licence model. Part of these TCO models are putative operational benefits, which are notoriously hard to quantify in monetary terms. It is on these operational benefits that I wanted to focus on in this blog.

Exadata: Some Less Sung Benefits

What has struck me from the outset when I started to engage with the platform, was that the people I talked to about Exadata. Be that Oracle database experts or customer DBAs, all pretty quickly came to mention aspects of the platform that identified areas for cost reduction: operational reliability (including security) efficiency, and reduced risk from unplanned outage.

In fairness to Oracle, they have always mentioned the operational benefits of the Exadata platform. With ease of patching and database upgrades being prime examples. However I suppose the demographic to whom this appeals most often doesn’t have the budget to drive the decision making for the adoption of the system, namely the operational staff. After all, it is those people who get called out at 2am in the morning when things fall over with the business screaming and shouting to get their systems back up and running. In fact, it was from one of these that I first heard the phrase, and I have heard it repeated many times since, delivered in a completely deadpan fashion, “it just works” when talking about the Exadata system. Arguably, as endorsements go, you can’t do much better.

Exadata X10: Why should I care?

So, if we ask ourselves the question “Exadata X10 – why should I care?” and examine it from the perspective of operational efficiency, what do we find?

For starters, the improved compute and storage capacities means that customers are looking at an even greater density for database deployment, i.e. a massive opportunity for consolidation.

This may be seen as a double-edged sword – all eggs in one basket – but in my experience the platform’s Maximum Availability Architecture compliant design mitigates most of the potential issues associated with high levels of deployment concentration. On top of this, the use of KVM virtualisation provides decent levels of environment separation that should leave all but the purist requirement of actual physical hardware separation satisfied. Having spent my formative IT years on an IBM mainframe, I recognise a lot of the mainframe level operational resilience features on the Exadata platform.

Deployment density of Oracle database instances under the auspices of database consolidation is not specific to the Exadata X10, as it has been a rationale behind some of the customer adoption of the platform for most of its existence, but the enhanced capacity of the X10 and the associated platform specific software enhancement make the proposition ever more compelling. It should be acknowledge, though, that consolidation if done most efficiently, always comes with a slight edge, i.e. a certain level of enforced standardisation.

The latest Exadata platform software (version 23.1 at the time of writing) supports all currently supported Oracle database versions (11gR2 onwards), but not older versions. Customers will have to fit in with Oracle’s obsolescence schedule for the currently supported versions to continue to enjoy the system’s benefits. This may represent a significant change to a customer’s current operational practices as many try to avoid upgrading their database software due to their often torturous application testing required when moving to newer database versions. On the plus side, as Oracle have increasingly become a large consumer of its own software related processes, such as database upgrades, these have become both easier and slicker.

With the rise of Oracle’s use of its own products, not least in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and its application products as Software as a Service (SaaS), operational efficiency, reliability and resilience are ever more important to Oracle. Arguably they always have been important, but this is now given additional impetus. The Oracle Autonomous Database best illustrates this for the Exadata platform.

This Oracle database deployment option, and it is principally that, rather than a different product, is predicated on the use of the Exadata platform as its foundation. The reason why it is only available in the Cloud (or Exadata Cloud at Customer) is that Oracle needs to be able to control the infrastructure and software stacks underpinning that database to provide the operational guarantees that make the service autonomous. So, one can see this as the ultimate implementation of the Oracle database, the company’s best practice recommendations put into action, scalable, performant and (from the perspective of Oracle as the service provider) operated securely and efficiently.

Customers often ask vendors for references, and I cannot think of a better reference for Exadata X10 than the OCI Autonomous Database service. I would argue that even if a move to Cloud is not what customers are looking at for their Oracle database, they could do worse than study the architecture of the Autonomous Database to see what is possible for a database consolidation project using the Exadata Database Machine.

Exadata X10: Establishing Trust

This touches on a final element that I wanted to mention here: trust. When a vendor prepares marketing material or responds to a tender they will, to put it politely, put their best foot forward. Even when preparing white papers to share best practices for the adoption and use of their products, their control is limited. Implementation, configuration and operation usually remain the ultimate responsibility of the customer.

I remember many a conversation with Oracle subject matter experts called in to investigate Oracle product related issues, and according to them the most common problems were, and probably still are, misconfiguration or misuse (here meaning pushing functionality beyond what it was designed for). This often leads to recriminations, break down in relationships and loss of trust in the product and vendor. What Oracle’s use of its own products and services in its Cloud is doing is to potentially take the edge off quite a few of such discussions.

The Exadata platform’s effectiveness and cost-efficiency as a consolidation platform, as advertised, are unquestionable. Because a quick look at the Autonomous Database service in OCI demonstrates this for all to see. It also gives customers the best possible prospect for the solution having longevity, something that should be a consideration if customers are taking a bet on any technology. I call it the enlightened self-interest principle: the vendor gains as much, if not a greater level of, benefit from the proposed solution than any customer. For Oracle to build its own technology future for its flagship database around the Exadata infrastructure does more to inspire trust in the product than any heart-felt protestation could.

Exadata X10: Final Thoughts

If your Oracle database estate is of a size that falls within the capacity scope of the Exadata, and definitely check if it has expanded since the last time you considered your infrastructure to bring it into this scope, you could do worse than consider the Exadata Database Machine, arguably the best enterprise platform to consolidate and run your Oracle databases.

Interested to know more?

If you would like to speak further on Exadata X10, or ANY Oracle related topic, please get in touch here.

connect@verticecloud.com

Cord Oestmann

Principal Solution Architect at Vertice

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