Oracle’s Nimbula integration bolsters enterprise OpenStack cred

Oracle this morning laid out plans for integrating Nimbula, the OpenStack-based cloud software that it acquired earlier this year, with Oracle hardware and software. The news appears to shed a bit of light on Oracle’s public cloud, indicating it embraces some OpenStack technologies.

Businesses and cloud service providers will be able to build infrastructure-as-a-service clouds on Oracle’s Exalogic rack using Oracle VM. The company plans to offer “blueprints” for provisioning and configuring Oracle apps and middleware as well as third party apps. Customers will also be able to use Oracle Enterprise Manger 12c to manage the cloud and offer self-service provisioning.

This announcement really has mixed implications for potential customers. In terms of service providers, I don’t see huge interest. Most service providers are going for super low cost hardware, not the brand-name variety that Oracle offers.

While enterprises are leaning the same way, some are still married to traditional vendors. Big Oracle shops might get some comfort in moving to the cloud, especially the open source OpenStack cloud, if they can still rely on Oracle software and hardware.

An interesting capability for those potential customers is that Oracle said that users will be able to move workloads “seamlessly” from their private clouds to the Oracle Public Cloud. That’s possible via OpenStack APIs, implying that Oracle’s Public Cloud supports them. Given the otherwise proprietary approach Oracle has taken to its cloud so far, that’s an interesting development.

Oracle is one of many large, traditional vendors to throw its weight behind OpenStack, joining IBM and HP.

In its press release, Oracle didn’t mention when any of this capability will become available. It doesn’t sound like executives mentioned time frames during OracleWorld where it announced the Nimbula integration.

I’ve asked Oracle about whether Nimbula will continue to be available to customers that want to run it on hypervisors from others, like VMware, and will update this post if I hear back.

Read more of Nancy Gohring's "To the Cloud" blog and follow the latest IT news at ITworld. Follow Nancy on Twitter at @ngohring and on Google+. For the latest IT news, analysis and how-tos, follow ITworld on Twitter and Facebook.