Database giant, Oracle, has officially entered the blockchain market by introducing its newest product which utilizes the idea of distributed ledger resources. The firm introduced its latest product during the OpenWorld 2017 conference in San Francisco. A public launch of the new platform is expected to occur sometime next year. Oracle has become the latest addition in the blockchain-as-a-service market, which already includes the IBM and Microsoft. These two tech companies are already courting their customers with cloud-based distributed ledger resources.
Oracle is looking forward to use blockchain technology to extend and streamline their existing cloud-based operations, which are aimed at the digitization of a wide range of business functions.
Frank Xiong, vice president of Blockchain Cloud Service department of Oracle, stated that the company wants to attract both large and small organizations with its latest product. He explained that startups are looking for smart contracts that provides them with cheaper applications using the cloud platform, as the pricing strategy is based on the transaction volume.
For the existing customers of the Database giant, the new product will allow them to connect with external partners and customers by plugging them into internal channels and processes in a more secure manner. Xiong explains:
"This blockchain platform will give them a platform to extend their services beyond their enterprise bundle, which means they can extend them outside to their business partners, advantage customers and so on."
Clearing the air
Blockchain technology enables the distribution of information without having to trust a central administrator. Critics note that, by integrating blockchain into Oracle, the company might be potentially cannibalizing its core business segment.
Xiong dismissed such accusations and stated that blockchains and databases should be viewed as competing entities instead of something else. He further states that, “we actually think that this is an advantage to us, ” arguing that the idea of blockchains as distributed ledgers is not entirely accurate as the technology is not limited to just that.
He further explains that due to the fact that a copy of data needs to kept by all the various peers and nodes of the system, increased adaption of blockchain among Oracle’s customers would create a new surge in the demand of company’s traditional data storage solutions.
Xiong comments:
"In traditional computer science, there is just one copy of the database. In blockchain, all of the ledgers are distributed, so actually everybody gets a copy [of the data]. So this is only going to expand that data storage [requirement]."