The world's two largest software companies, Microsoft and Oracle, typically fierce competitors, have taken a noteworthy step forward for their mutual customers. Last week, they announced Oracle Database@Azure, signifying a fresh milestone in their collaboration. While previous efforts over the past four years focused on enhancing Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) connectivity to Azure, Database@Azure will bring Exadata infrastructure directly into the Azure datacenters, eliminating latency concerns between the two clouds. Tessell welcomes this initiative as providing customers the choice to run their Oracle database estate either on native Azure or on Exadata Azure.
The Announcement
On September 14, 2023, at a groundbreaking joint event held at Microsoft's Redmond headquarters, Oracle’s Chairman and CTO, Larry Ellison, and Microsoft’s, Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella, unveiled Oracle Database@Azure. Ellison underscored the vast amount of data that has yet to migrate from on-premises to the cloud. The collaboration aims to expedite cloud migration for Oracle’s clientele by providing reduced latency and enhanced security within a unified operating environment hosted in Azure.
Database@Azure streamlines the acquisition of Exadata infrastructure through the Azure Marketplace, allowing customers to leverage their existing Azure commitments. Once this offering comes to fruition, enterprise Oracle customers can realize their longstanding desire to run mission-critical workloads using Oracle RAC (Real Applications Clusters) on Azure Exadata infrastructure.
One of the standout features of this collaboration, as emphasized during the announcement, is that Oracle clientele can easily access Microsoft's Azure OpenAI service. Nadella highlighted the potential to assist organizations in bringing their mission-critical applications to the cloud, unlocking a new era of AI-powered innovation.
Tessell’s Complementary Platform - Available Today
Tessell customers already benefit from running their mission-critical, and other Oracle-powered applications, in the Microsoft cloud. Tessell for Azure hosts high-performance workloads along with multi-availability zone HA and cross-region DR while also providing highly differentiated data management. Tessell is delighted to extend these DBaaS capabilities to include the Exadata infrastructure running on Azure cloud.
Tessell offers three distinct advantages: Data Flexibility, Oracle Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Cost Savings.
Data Flexibility (Data@Your Terms): Tessell’s mission since inception is to serve as the Switzerland of DBaaS data infrastructure and management across multiple clouds. Tessell empowers organizations to seamlessly transition their databases, including Oracle, SQL, PostgreSQL, and MySQL across public clouds and on-premises environments without the fear of vendor lock-in - even from Tessell. Tessell is in the process of additionally supporting both MongoDB and Milvus - among other databases.
Tessell empowers customers with the autonomy to choose how their databases are hosted. The Virtual Private Tessell (VPT) model, similar to Snowflake, is fully managed by Tessell, offering a dedicated cloud account for enhanced flexibility and customization, a choice often favored by startups and smaller enterprises. In contrast, the VPT@Customer model, reminiscent of Databricks, involves hosting the data plane within the customer's Azure tenancy, delivering high levels of customization and flexibility - a preference typically seen among larger enterprises.
In addition to the data plane, both large enterprise and government customers can now also operate the Tessell control plane in their preferred cloud environment, whether AWS or Azure. This commitment to flexibility will extend to new environments as Tessell expands its cloud support.
Oracle PaaS in Azure: Tessell offers a comprehensive managed service for both commercial and open-source databases, including patching, provisioning, cloning, upgrading, and advanced data management capabilities such as automated data masking, FinOps visibility and corresponding cloud compute shape curation, Terraform integration, and policy-driven self-service data access.
Cost Savings: Oracle customers migrating their on-premises databases to Tessell for Azure have realized significant cost advantages along with IOPS levels comparable to Exadata. Tessell achieves this high performance via its patented utilization of Azure's NVMe compute shapes, making it economically compelling to migrate even resource-demanding mission-critical workloads to native Azure. Tessell further reduces costs by including Oracle database lifecycle management capabilities and eliminating the need for third-party backup and masking solutions.
Migrating Oracle to Azure with Tessell
Tessell for Azure already enables Oracle clientele access to Microsoft’s Azure OpenAPI service. Customers can use their existing Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitments (MACCs) to purchase Tessell via the Microsoft Marketplace, receiving a consolidated Azure invoice that simplifies procurement. Furthermore, Tessell collaborates with Microsoft to provide prospective customers with initial assessments and complimentary Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analyses, often including a free Proof-of-Concept (POC), as well as heavily discounted or even no-cost migration from on-premises or other clouds to Tessell for Azure.
TCO Analysis: Tessell's financial analysts engage with prospective customers to conduct TCO analyses, approaching them with a consultant's mindset. They employ actual customer data whenever possible, and maintain transparency in both their assumptions and calculations. IT leadership can confidently present various on-premises and cloud scenario comparisons to the CFO and board.
POC: The Proof-of-Concept typically involves replicating an on-premises Oracle database to Tessell for Azure and synchronizing the two databases. Customers can then initiate a 1-click Disaster Recovery failover test at will. They can also utilize the secondary environment to evaluate performance, cost, reporting, analytics, and all the tasks of a production environment - all free of risk.
Supporting Exadata Azure
Exadata is a superbly engineered machine tailored for Oracle databases. While Tessell for Azure provides failover capabilities very close to Oracle RAC, many large enterprises insist on the zero-downtime that only RAC enables. Tessell plans to add Exadata in Azure to its supported platforms, providing Exadata on Azure customers with the benefits of its database management.
Tessell's commitment to data flexibility, Oracle PaaS in Azure, and cost savings positions it as a compelling solution for Oracle customers considering their cloud migration options. With Tessell, customers can embark on their cloud journey with confidence, knowing they have a partner dedicated to streamlining and expediting the migration process while delivering a superior cloud experience.
