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What now, Larry? AWS boss insists Amazon will have dumped Oracle database by end of 2019

Clock's ticking on Ellison's smack talk

re:Invent AWS boss Andy Jassy has doubled down on claims Amazon will "be done" with Oracle databases by 2019, and used his Re:Invent keynote to throw shade at Big Red.

Speaking at Amazon's main tech conference in Las Vegas this week, Jassy said that the world of "old guard commercial-grade databases" has been "miserable" for enterprises for the past 20 years.

Targeting cloud rival Oracle, Jassy said these legacy database vendors are too expensive and don't serve customers well, pointing to aggressive audits and proprietary systems that lock in customers.

He also rubbished Big Red's market share, showing a slide that was mostly AWS orange, followed by Microsoft at 13.3 per cent, Alibaba at 4.6 per cent and Google at 3.3 per cent.

Oracle was identified by a pop-up Larry Ellison, appearing like a small cartoon villain, in a segment of "other vendors".

The trading of blows is customary at vendor conferences – Ellison spends huge chunks of his keynotes trash-talking AWS, with the common refrain that Amazon still uses Oracle's databases.

The online marketplace giant's efforts to shift off its competitor's tech is well documented – less well evidenced – but that hasn't stopped Jassy from expanding on claims the firm is making strides.

In an interview with CNBC at re:Invent, he said: "We're virtually done moving away from Oracle on the database side... I think by the end of 2019 or mid-2019 we'll be done."

He claimed that 88 per cent of databases running Oracle will be on Amazon's DynamoDB or Aurora databases by January, and that 97 per cent of mission-critical databases will be on DynamoDB or Aurora by the end of next year.

Jassy also reiterated a previous tweet that Amazon moved its data warehouse from Oracle to Redshift on 1 November.

Elsewhere at the conference, AWS announced DeepRacer, a tiny radio-controlled "self-driving" car – which comes hot on the heels of Ellison's comments at OpenWorld that Amazon's database was semi-autonomous at best.

"That's like a semi-autonomous car. You get in, drive it... and you die," said Ellison. Of course, no one can get into this one. ®

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