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Oracle (ORCL) Introduces New Tools to Boost Cloud Security

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Oracle (ORCL - Free Report) recently added new tools — Cloud Guard and Maximum Security Zones —  to its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to boost security for customers. The tools will be available across all its cloud commercial regions at no extra cost.

Cloud Guard will allow customers to monitor threats and take quick actions. Per Oracle, Cloud Guard will act as “log and events aggregator” that will combine with all OCI’s computing, networking, and storage services to identify targets, and implement responders as well as detectors. Targets encompass all the resources that will be monitored on the OCI, detectors will single out security issues while responders will offer remedial measures to tackle the threat, added the company.

Oracle Maximum Security Zones are protective measures that enable customers to detect resources that are created in violation of security protocols on the OCI across services like networking, encryption, object storage, DBaaS and file storage.

The enterprises are rapidly migrating their workloads to cloud, triggered by coronavirus-led work-from-home wave. Citing a report from Accuris, Oracle revealed that the along with rapid cloud deployment, there has been increasing number of security breaches.

Moreover, citing Gartner projections, Oracle revealed that most of the enterprise customers will continue to grapple with managing cloud risks through 2024 while 99% of security breaches will be owing to the client’s mistakes, through 2025. 

The new cloud solutions are aimed at assisting enterprises to effectively manage security threats and initiate response manners timely. This is expected to boost the uptake of its OCI service and bolster cloud revenues in the coming quarters.

Rapid Adoption of OCI Augurs Well

Oracle is witnessing rapid growth in adoption of cloud solutions. Recently, the company bagged a deal from Altair, a software and cloud solutions provider, for migrating the latter’s high computing performance (HPC) workload to OCI.

Other noteworthy deal wins of OCI services and autonomous database include Xactly, Schneider Electric, Rinna, Polycab India,United Breweries of India, Safaricom PLC, McDonald’s, Arterra Wines Canada, and Lahore University of Management Sciences.

Moreover, the next-generation autonomous database launched by Oracle, supported by ML, is gaining strong foothold. In first-quarter fiscal 2021, Oracle added new Autonomous Database cloud customers. New product introductions are likely to boost growth in this category. Also, autonomous database in Gen2 public cloud infrastructure is witnessing rapid uptake.

Autonomous database consumption revenues increased 64% and annualized consumption revenues for OCI services surged 130% during fiscal first quarter.

Oracle’s latest Exadata Cloud@Customer service offering is also gaining rapid adoption among on-premise customers.

Oracle is also expanding its data center footprint to support its cloud initiative. The company has 26 cloud regions currently and it plans to build 10 additional cloud regions over the next nine months.

By strengthening its cloud infrastructure, Oracle, currently carrying a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), is looking to expand its share in the fast growing lucrative cloud market. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Per a Gartner Report, spending on public cloud is expected to grow 6.3% to $257.9 billion while SaaS, and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) growth rates are projected to be 2.6% and 16%, respectively, in 2020. By 2022, public cloud services market is projected to hit $364.1 billion, up 50% from $242.7 billion in 2019, added the Garter report.

Headwinds Remain

Oracle is required to make investments toward strengthening its cloud offerings with advanced capabilities to capture a larger market share in the cloud computing market, that is dominated by Amazon’s (AMZN - Free Report) Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft’s (MSFT - Free Report) cloud computing arm, Azure. This is likely to put pressure on margins, at least in the near term.

Oracle’s market share was trailing behind AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Alibaba, IBM, Salesforce (CRM - Free Report) and Tencent in the second quarter of 2020, per a Synergy Research Group report.

Also, coronavirus crisis-triggered sluggish spending across small and medium businesses owing to restricted economic activity, and weak job market are likely to exert pressure on adoption of Oracle’s cloud offerings in the foreseeable future.

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