Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Reviews

The main use case includes the use of Oracle Financing along with the automation that Oracle provides, which is embedded in the solution itself and helps the banking and insurance to move to Oracle Fusion.

There are a number of features. The main feature is automation and other features like automated testing. Additionally, every three months, Oracle makes it a point to upgrade their systems, so they are not worried about being on the old systems, which is a benefit for the customers who are dealing with us.

The area where Oracle needs to improve is the mid-level customers for whom they can come up with some solutions other than Oracle NetSuite. Oracle NetSuite is meant for mid-level markets, but customers are willing to move to Oracle Fusion instead of opting for Oracle NetSuite. Oracle needs to properly convey that message to the customers and the market so that mid-level customers can use Oracle Fusion. Right now, Oracle Fusion software is meant for enterprise-sized customers, and as per the mindset of the current market, mid-level customers don't plan to buy Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP. Oracle NetSuite is an option for very small-scale businesses. I spend a lot of time explaining to mid-level customers that they can buy Oracle Fusion.

The solution's scalability is an area with shortcomings, because of which it needs a lot of improvement. Mid-level customers feel that Oracle is not scalable in their environment and is an enterprise-level segment solution.

I have been using Oracle Cloud Platform for almost three years. We are a company dealing with one of the partners of Oracle. We provide Oracle to the end customers in the market.

The stability of the solution is very good. I would rate the stability of Oracle Cloud Platform a ten out of ten.

My company has a big set of clients, including enterprises and public sector customers.

I would rate the scalability of the solution a five out of ten.

The technical support is good. I would rate the technical support for the solution an eight out of ten.

On a scale of one to ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy, I rate the initial setup somewhere around seven. The solution is deployed on the public cloud in our organization.

The time taken for deployment depends on the customer's complexity. Approximately it may take around three to four months.

As for the steps for deployment, every customer's requirement has to be considered, and the implementation should be started at the preferred time when the customer wants it. The customer's cooperation is more important to make sure that the implementation is done properly. It is not Oracle but the customer and the implementation part that plays a key role in the deployment phase.

The solution is expensive. I would rate the pricing as ten out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive. 

There are no additional costs involved in Oracle Cloud Platform other than the licensing fees.

My only advice to those planning to use it is that they need to move from a customized way of working with their ERP to standardization because Oracle Fusion is all about standardizing the global standard of Oracle Financial Services. Oracle Fusion has adopted whatever globally is being followed. Many customers want the leverage of using their finance system the way they want it, but Oracle Fusion concentrates more on standardization and following the global standards for finance. Any customer willing to go for Oracle Fusion needs to understand that there will be certain standardization, and if you customize it, the work or benefit of Oracle Fusion gets lost. We need to move to standardization rather than making the software more customizable as per the business.

Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten.

The solution works very well.

The solution's cost could be better. Also, it takes time to release resources compared to AWS. They should improve this particular area.

We have been using the solution for nine months.

The solution is stable.

Around 40% of our organization uses this solution. It has good scalability.

The solution's technical support services are more expensive than AWS. Also, they should expand the team to address day-to-day issues.

Neutral

The solution is expensive.

I rate the solution a five out of ten.

The solution is used for syncing all the information from our On-Premises Data Centre to the Oracle CI. We are using Oracle Infrastructure as a service.

We are not using any features offered by OCI but only using virtual machines. So our data only syncs from our On-premises to cloud. The compute and performance are better than other cloud solutions.

The initial setup can be made easier and the technical support team should give faster responses.

Oracle can introduce the VPN service that can be directly connected to the machine and perform work directly on the server. This feature can help users.

I have been using Oracle Cloud Platform for more than four years.

It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a nine out of ten.

For its scalability, there should be provision that we can build a scale up or down scale on a running system.Whenever we scale up or down scale, we have to shut down the system and then apply it to do the configuration. I rate the scalability an eight out of ten.

The technical support is very slow. Recently, I raised a concern for MFA but did not get any response for eight days. After I escalated it to the manager I got a response. I rate the support a five out of ten.

Neutral

The initial setup is very complex. I have faced difficulty configuring a new region. We already deployed from one region to another region, but I faced a lot of the problem when configuring the new region.Another issue that I was faced was when I am allowing any other server or any other IP, to access from the effectuation basis but there is no feature to allow me chose the server by server name. There should be a provision to allow firewall by server name or you can set the domain name. But at present its only based on IP.

As the solution is a bit expensive, the Return On Investment will take one to two years to show.

Oracle Cloud Platform is a bit costly. You can always bring your own license or subscribe to the SaaS option, but the SaaS option is very costly.

I rate the pricing a six out of ten.

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the platform to host Oracle ERP and Oracle databases. We're a service-oriented company, and we provide solutions to our clients. 

The performance and processing capability are excellent. 

We faced issues building a disaster recovery site.

Oracle support could be better; we had cases where certain regions experienced specific issues and received little help from Oracle.

Sometimes when we're doing a cloud migration, we get generic error messages, which makes it challenging to figure out the issue. Relevant and easy-to-interpret log messages would make finding and resolving issues easier.

Recently, Oracle said they were facing an issue with malware and that we needed to apply the latest security vulnerability patch. Our question is, if Oracle Cloud has a lot of security at the network level, how does malware get into the system? They also say Linux is supposed to be unbreakable, so we have some security concerns. We discovered an issue in our private cloud where a process was consuming too much CPU, and Oracle told us it was due to a malware attack. The security needs to be better.

We've been using Oracle Cloud for almost three years.

We faced a few stability issues, but overall I rate it eight out of ten. 

The scalability is excellent, so I rate the platform ten out of ten here. We migrated ten of our clients to Oracle Cloud. 

We have an issue, and we've been waiting for an Oracle expert to help us for over a month. They should be able to find out what is happening quickly, but the process is dragging on.

Neutral

The deployment is of average complexity; it is neither difficult nor straightforward.

The price is middling; it's not the most expensive product, but there is still some room for it to be more flexible.

I rate the solution seven out of ten. 

Our specialty is insurance software. We were primarily vendors for software licensing, but we've transitioned our product to the cloud in the last two years.

The deployment depends on what a client wants. We use public clouds for clients that are willing to take our products as a SaaS model. For the ones that are on-prem, we split the load between the core platform, which is on-prem, and non-essential services, which are on the cloud.

I head the sales and marketing team. So, specifically on the feature set side, multi-tenancy is the one that I'm most familiar with. It's also the one that we found to be the most beneficial to us because it allows us to take clients that have multiple sites. For instance, one of our larger clients, which is a bank based out of South Africa, has offices in multiple countries. It allows us to multi-tenant each and create a tenant for each country within multi-tenanted architecture.

The biggest challenge I'm having with the cloud offering is the sizing. So, pricing becomes difficult. The sizing challenge is in terms of being very clear on how your data growth or your requirements would be. It becomes a bit difficult to be able to ensure that there's enough future proofing in what you've signed. At the same time, the whole idea behind the cloud is to be able to pay for what you use. You don't want to pay for something that you're not using.

It has been two years. 

All our clients are enterprise clients. We don't have any small clients.

The main challenge that we have with scalability is the opacity and the pricing. Pricing becomes a challenge because you're not very clear on at what point in time you'll be breaking or you'll be exceeding the size you already acquired. That is the challenge, but Oracle powers some of the biggest cloud platforms in the world, and so do AWS and Azure. All of them have the ability and skill to run very large platforms. 

They have an office locally. Amazon has only just started an office locally. Microsoft has been here for a long time. We've been Oracle Partners for 22 years, So, we're familiar with them anyway.

I know it's very straightforward. Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud, and Amazon AWS have some sort of out-of-the-box packages that you can purchase. Oracle also has a sandbox environment that they can provision for you to be able to set up your operation just to try it out. So, the setup is straightforward.

Its pricing is complex, but as partners, we can get away with quite a bit of discounting because we deal with them directly. 

I would rate their pricing probably a one or two out of five because they're quite expensive. Microsoft Azure will probably be the cheapest because depending on the Microsoft product that you have, they have some sort of bundling. There are things that they give you to get you onto Azure. AWS is probably somewhere in the middle.

We work in a very narrow space. Our specialty is insurance software. We have an insurance ERP. We are an ISV. So, we make our own software. In the sub-Saharan African market, we're, in a way, the largest vendor. So, our recommendation for the clientele that we serve would ideally be Oracle. 

There are a lot of data laws that are being enacted. Kenya is one of the big ones enacting data access and data sovereignty laws, which is probably denting a lot of cloud offerings. However, there are a lot of co-located operations where people are providing data centers within the country. The in-country cloud providers, such as MTN and Liquid Intelligent Technologies, give you a lot more flexibility. In that scenario, you get a lot of flexibility in hybridizing the cloud setup that you have, and all three of them would work pretty much the same way. From a Kenyan or African perspective, Oracle and Microsoft have a very good footprint across all the countries we operate in. We're in eight countries now. Amazon AWS is only just starting in Kenya. I don't know if they're anywhere else. They might be in Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa. So, they would have a hub-and-spoke type model in terms of how you'd be able to support it. If I were to recommend anything, it would be Oracle Cloud and Microsoft Azure.

I would rate Oracle Cloud a nine out of ten.

Oracle Cloud has many use cases, and even open-source or non-Oracle products can be hosted on it. Some customers of my company even host SAP applications on Oracle Cloud. People use it for healthcare applications and other third-party applications. People also use it for development purposes.

Oracle has Development Cloud Services bundled with Java, so people use it for application development. Oracle Cloud is also being used for high-performance computing, for example, in wireless industries with crash tests or speed tests that create a huge amount of data in a short period.

Other use cases for Oracle Cloud include large-scale migrating and hosting of databases, for example, enterprise-class databases and open-source databases, which is something that my company does.

Oracle Cloud is also used for hosting ERP products such as SAP Oracle, Oracle ERP, EQL, JD Edwards, etc. It's also used for engineering, for example, GIS applications.

Currently, my company has one customer doing a POC and plans to go live in early 2023, once the POC is approved. For this customer, Oracle Cloud will be utilized for multiple GIS applications, collecting location data through IoT, etc.

Oracle Cloud has multiple use cases. In the area of data management, there's the Oracle Data Lakehouse which is a complete suite of services for managing both structured and unstructured data from different sources. My company works with various customers on multiple use cases. These are customers from different industries involved in different scenarios. One healthcare customer is analyzing the high volume of data multidimensionally with patients, particularly through predictive analysis of certain treatments. Because of in-built products on Oracle Cloud, my team can do some of the concepts based on what industry leaders have in mind. My team can translate that into action points very quickly. 

Other use cases of Oracle Cloud include tech management, ERP, and geological information systems. You can also use it for asset reports, maintenance reports, and utility management such as electricity, water, telephone, etc. It can also be utilized for transportation, traffic management, management of parking spaces for large cities or large building complexes, etc. Oracle Cloud can help in building applications for a smart city. It's suitable for a lot of use cases. You just need to utilize, model, configure, and implement Oracle Cloud.

Oracle Cloud has wonderful features and offerings as a service. It's not just a pure-play cloud product or SaaS application. It has a complete suite from infrastructure to platform as a service to software as a service, and this is what I find most valuable in Oracle Cloud. For infrastructure on the cloud or infrastructure as a service on the cloud, there's OCI (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure). 

Oracle Cloud is easily available. You just click it. I also found the feature of creating a landing zone valuable. Oracle Cloud is also very flexible as it lets you have a hybrid cloud model along with other cloud solutions. I also like that it offers good management on the cloud.

Oracle Cloud is ready to use as a service, and that's wonderful because the time to market is very quick.

I also like that Oracle Cloud offers high performance and high availability. A lot of people claim that there's high availability in their companies' cloud operations, but technically speaking, pure high availability in today's context is found in Oracle Cloud.

What I'd like to see from Oracle Cloud is an option for the customer to have a single portal to manage and monitor not just Oracle Cloud, but some of the on-premise products in the hybrid scenario as well. If it can be shipped out as an out-of-the-box solution, that would be wonderful. It's not so easy, but for a company like Oracle, it shouldn't be a problem.

Many customers go through a lot of effort and burn money to achieve this, so it's an opportunity for Oracle to provide it for customers looking for this type of solution.

I've been working with Oracle Cloud for fifteen years.

Oracle Cloud is a stable solution. My team has been using it for a good amount of time and it's very stable.

Oracle Cloud has good scalability. To a certain level, you can scale it without even issuing a separate PO. Beyond that, you can always get in touch with the Oracle team and discuss how to scale Oracle Cloud.

The technical support for Oracle Cloud is excellent.

The initial setup for Oracle Cloud is easy, but after you purchase it, you have to wait for the Oracle representative to onboard you to the cloud. Oracle may have a specific reason for this step, so I won't tell Oracle to automate it. If there's a scope to do it, then it's all well and good. Otherwise, Oracle should solve this.

Some customers enjoyed ROI from Oracle Cloud. From an operations point of view, sixty percent of the customers who've embraced the latest versions of Oracle Cloud were able to optimize the cost of the operations within the first three quarters.

The price for Oracle Cloud may seem expensive, but if you start comparing features and what Oracle offers, you'll realize that the pricing for Oracle Cloud is competitive.

If you consider every aspect of Oracle Cloud, you'll see that its price tag is reasonable because it has a good user interface, user experience, and management. Oracle Cloud is a sophisticated infrastructure and the level of management it allows you to enjoy isn't available in other solutions, so I wouldn't worry about needing to invest huge money into it because it's a wonderful product to use.

My company is a partner of Oracle Cloud, and it deals with different versions for clients. My team is supporting all versions of Oracle Cloud, but now customers prefer the latest version because of the digital transformations across all industries and all regions of the world.

Across all regions and verticals, in the customer community, people worry about multiple aspects in terms of security, scalability, etc. My advice is when you're planning to migrate to Oracle Cloud or any other public cloud, I can say that Oracle Cloud has all features, for example, routine security and all other features bundled, without any extra costs. Data egress is also free up to 10GB. From compliance and regulatory perspectives, it's all in place in every region Oracle Cloud operates. This is what you should look into, especially if you're an enterprise-class customer when you need to host your business or enterprise applications, or any mission-critical applications. You should seriously look into it and utilize Oracle Cloud because it's compliant in all areas and aspects.

My rating for Oracle Cloud is nine out of ten.

I'm primarily using it for approving purchases and dealing with purchase invoices and Oracle HCM, an HR-related product for evaluations of myself and my employees.

We like the accessibility. It's a cloud, so it is easy to access anywhere. 

We're always on the latest version as it updates automatically. However, there are some checks or controls by respective companies. If they don't want to go on the updated version immediately, they don't need to.

The product is easy to maintain. 

I love that all the things I need are in one place. 

It is stable and reliable. 

Since it is on the cloud, you often have to deal with network issues.

Speed can be an issue as well. 

It does require some training in order to be able to use it effectively.

I've been using the solution for four years. It's been a while. 

The product is quite stable. It's reliable. The only issue is if you have network issues, you'll have trouble accessing the cloud.

We contact our support, and if they cannot figure out the issue, they will go to Oracle. I don't deal with Oracle directly. 

This solution requires licensing. 

We're a customer and end-user.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're using.  It's on the cloud; therefore, the latest version is always used.

The solution can be a bit difficult, and new users need to be prepared for that. They need to connect with Oracle and learn more about it in order to understand it better. Then, it gets easier to use. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. 

We use the solution in insurance and financial institutions like banks.

The solution is better than its previous on-premise version. The on-premise version was not flexible enough for end-user reporting requirements. The product enables users to create their own reports. It is really helpful.

The product is not stable enough for our SCM client’s requirements. The clients' requirements are not feasible for the out-of-the-box solution. The product features related to the manufacturing domain must be improved.

I have been using the solution for five to six years.

The tool is not stable. We ended up doing additional tasks to fulfill the client’s requirements. It is not that flexible.

The solution is scalable. Our customers are mainly enterprise-level businesses.

The technical support is very good. It has improved over the last few years. Now, we get better responses from the engineers.

Positive

The installation is very easy. The time taken for deployment depends on the volume of the configuration. Generally, it can be done within one or two days. We have one SME and another person to support the SME in configuring the product. It is very easy to maintain the tool.

The product’s pricing is reasonable compared to other tools in the market. We pay a yearly subscription. Our clients mainly pay the initial license cost and the yearly subscription fee.

If someone wants to implement the product for a new client, they must understand the features and functionalities available out of the box. I would rate the tool a ten out of ten for the finance modules, but I would rate it a seven for manufacturing. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.