Oracle said it will migrate companies’ most complicated computer programs to its cloud for free as it tries to catch a new wave of potential cloud-computing clients by aiming to save them time and money.
The pandemic prompted many businesses and governments to shift from in-house digital storage and computing to leased cloud servers from Amazon.com Inc’s Web Services and other providers, Reuters reported.
Oracle is counting on its free support to persuade organizations that have not made a switch – or done so only partially – to opt for a move to its infrastructure.
More than 100 customers have taken advantage of what Oracle is calling its Cloud Lift Services over the last six months, and the program is opening globally on Wednesday.
Over the last nine months, Oracle has shifted 1,000 workers to focus on Cloud Lift Services. The offer will pay off for Oracle, but he declined to say how much the company has budgeted for it, Vinay Kumar, senior vice president at Oracle, said.
Oracle’s expertise in using its own tools efficiently and setting up applications to work smoothly on the cloud speeds transitions and reduce the risk of customers’ encountering errors, he said.
Rival cloud providers discount transition support but typically only for key customers or those that agree to long-term deals or minimum spending.
Oracle is not requiring commitments, but the program is limited to what he called the “handful of applications” that would be most difficult for a customer to migrate and excludes ones requiring a thorough rewrite.
Among early testers was a new client, U.S. agribusiness Cargill. With Oracle’s help, Cargill transitioned in weeks, not months, Kumar said.
Oracle said its free Cloud Lift Services gives Oracle customers access to technical tools and cloud engineering resources to migrate workloads to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
“Oracle Cloud Lift Services together with Infosys Cobalt cloud offerings help our customers accelerate the work of migrating to the cloud and modernizing their landscape to drive faster business results,” said Gopikrishnan Konnanath, SVP & Service Offering Head, Oracle Services, Infosys.
Seattle Sounders FC, the American professional soccer club, has also realized benefits from Oracle Cloud Lift Services.
“With Oracle Cloud Lift Services, we’re able to accelerate our migration to the cloud, providing us with valuable hands-on expertise from Oracle’s Cloud Engineering team,” said Ravi Ramineni, vice president, Soccer Analytics and Research, Seattle Sounders FC.
Cargill is a global food corporation working alongside farmers, producers, manufacturers, retailers, governments and other organizations to nourish the world in a safe, responsible and sustainable way.
“Oracle’s cloud architects took us from zero to production through the Oracle Cloud Lift Services work and made it a smooth transition to launch new Cargill services in their cloud all while maintaining a strong focus on security,” said Terence Schofield, Quantitative Trading Technology Director, Cargill.
Rice University uses Oracle Cloud Lift Services to help deploy Open Nebula on Oracle Cloud which involves technical work such as the deployment of large-scale Kubernetes clusters running on GPUs. This is one of the largest open-source projects the university IT team is involved in.
“The collaboration between Oracle technical experts and my team has provided learning opportunities and enabled us to explore new and innovative technical solutions,” said Klara Jelinkova, CIO of Rice University.