Oracle takes aim at Amazon with new cloud menu Watch Now

Amazon may have turned off its Oracle data warehouse in favor of Amazon Web Services database technology, but no one else in their right mind would, Oracle's outspoken co-founder and CTO Larry Ellison said Monday.

"We have a huge technology leadership in database over Amazon," Ellison said on a conference call following the release of Oracle's second quarter financial results. "In terms of technology, there is no way that... any normal person would move from an Oracle database to an Amazon database."

During last month's AWS re:Invent conference, AWS CTO Werner Vogels gave an in-the-weeds talk explaining why Amazon turned off its Oracle data warehouse. In a clear jab at Oracle, Vogels wrote off the "90's technology" behind most relational databases. Cloud native databases, he said, are the basis of innovation.

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The remarks may have gotten under Ellison's skin. Moving from Oracle databases to AWS "is just incredibly expensive and complicated," he said Monday. "And you've got to be willing to give up tons of reliability, tons of security, tons of performance... Nobody, save maybe Jeff Bezos, gave the command, 'I want to get off the Oracle database."

Ellison said that Oracle will not only hold onto its 50 percent relational database market share but will expand it, thanks to the combination of Oracle's new Generation 2 Cloud infrastructure and its autonomoius database technology.

"You will see rapid migration of Oracle from on-premise to the Oracle public cloud," he said. "Nobody else is going to go through that forced march to go on to the Amazon database."

Currenty, Oracle is running more than 1,000 autonomous database trial activations per month. "It is the driving force in infrastructure," Ellison said.

Along with migrating its database market share to the cloud, Ellison said Oracle is also focused on expanding its market leadership in cloud ERP.

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In Q2, Fusion ERP and NetSuite ERP -- Oracle's two cloud ERP businesses -- delivered a combined revenue growth rate of 32 percent. Fusion ERP now has nearly 6,000 customers, while NetSuite ERP has more than 16,000 customers.

"Oracle is the clear leader in cloud ERP," Co-CEO Mark Hurd said in a statement. "ERP has always been the largest segment of the enterprise applications business, so we have lots of room to grow as customers migrate from their traditional on-premise ERP to the Oracle Fusion ERP Cloud."

On Monday's call, Hurd added, "This is perhaps the best apps quarter we've had, just in terms of bookings."

For the quarter overall, Oracle managed to beat bottom line and top line expectations.

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Q2 non-GAAP earnings per share rose 16 percent year-over-year to 80 cents. Total revenues came to $9.6 billion, unchanged compared to Q2 last year.

Wall Street was looking for earnings of 78 cents per share on revenue of $9.52 billion.

Revenues from Cloud Services and License Support came to $6.6 billion, a 3 percent increase year-over-year. Cloud License and On-Premise License revenues were $1.2 billion, down 9 percent.

Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz noted in a statement that free cash flow grew 10 percent to $13.8 billion. "I am confident that we will continue to record strong EPS and free cash flow growth during the second half of this fiscal year," she said.