Oracle teases cloud freebies for ISVs

Oracle has teased a new program to entice independent software vendors to its database and cloud platforms.

During Q&A towards the end of the company’s Q4 2019 earnings call, founder Larry Ellison was asked how Oracle plans  to attract developers to its database and cloud.

Ellison responded by explaining that both SAP and Salesforce’s SaaS run on Oracle databases, which means the company already engages with many developers.

He then revealed new plans to attract more developers.  

“In fact, yesterday, we were putting the finishing touches of a program we're going to be announcing to developers at Oracle OpenWorld, which is basically free services to developers, if you will,” he said.

“So developers and college entrepreneurs can get this free service, will be able to provide this free service that will let developers to start on the Oracle cloud, build their applications, and graduate from being a maybe a sole entrepreneur, someplace in the dorm and MIT to eventually being an entrepreneur starting a company and then becoming an ISV,” Ellison explaind.”

“That's the cycle. We want to sign up people early. And we have all sorts of cloud programs we're putting in place to be able to do that.”

Oracle is far from alone in offering freebies to early-stage entrepreneurs or students. Nor is it alone in recognising that having an ISV choose its cloud can lead to mushrooming sales as that ISV finds customers.

But it is not, perhaps, the cloud that an aspiring developer considers first: AWS is a developer’s darling, Microsoft’s vast ISV ecosystem gravitates towards Azure and Google is attracting attention with its emphasis on Kubernetes and machine learning.

Oracle’s offerings will therefore need a certain something if they’re to stand out.

OpenWorld is in mid-September: CRN will make sure we track down whatever announcement follows from Ellison’s tease!