TechTarget contributor Kurt Marko discusses that Oracle Cloud isn’t wholly free forever; instead, it offers an Always Free Tier and a 30-day Free Trial Program with 300 credits to get users started for free. He details these programs’ limits as well as comparing them with those offered by competitors. How to buy Oracle cloud account.
Unregistering a free tier can be challenging and may take multiple attempts at different times of the day.
What is Oracle Cloud?
Oracle Cloud is a platform designed to integrate, deploy, and extend applications over a global network of managed data centers. This service includes infrastructure services (IaaS), platform as a service offering (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS). Oracle’s Cloud service supports various platforms, programming languages, databases, and hardware systems from both itself and third-party vendors – while offering multiple deployment models such as bare metal compute, virtualized multi-tenant infrastructure, as well as database, software development, and storage solutions.
Oracle Cloud offers a secure and highly available hosted environment for business applications. It enables easy migration without changing application code or migrating to different programming languages, supporting an array of operating systems, hypervisors, and virtualization software, as well as various data formats and interfaces compatible with its APIs for managing applications and infrastructure.
Oracle Cloud offers infrastructure services with scalable compute capabilities, high-performance storage capacity, and network connectivity in a private virtual overlay. It features flexible pricing models and performance to meet your requirements, as well as multitenant-friendly environments with top security safeguards to safeguard mission-critical data.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s Object Storage provides unstructured storage in buckets to provide elasticity and scale. Additionally, this solution offers data services like replication, indexing, search, and data integrity monitoring; plus, it uses server-side encryption to protect data at rest while only making it available to authorized users.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s computing capabilities are designed to handle a broad array of workloads, from high-performance computing and real-time analytics and streaming data to business continuity. Scaling resources as needed with ease means no costly capacity bottlenecks or decreased efficiency – creating greater efficiencies overall.
Rackspace Technology and Oracle collaborate to support customers when moving existing applications to the cloud. We can help secure integrations with third-party clouds such as Oracle Cloud, as well as create a comprehensive infrastructure architecture designed to reduce costs, simplify management, and deliver optimal performance. Our migration solutions enable the smooth transfer of apps, databases, networks, systems, and servers into Oracle Cloud without disruption or loss of data.
What is the Always Free tier?
Oracle recently expanded its infrastructure-as-a-service offering by including 13 more services in their Always Free Tier to attract developers to use its IaaS platform. These new offerings include an Arm-based Ampere A1 compute instance, an Autonomous JSON database, NoSQL storage service connector hubs, flexible load balancers, network load balancers, VPN connect V2 security zones, and OCI bastion, among others.
The free tier provides up to 1 OCPU and 20 GB of storage, giving users enough resources to test out Oracle’s Autonomous JSON database and APEX low-code development environment, among others. Also included is a virtual network providing up to 50 Mbps of bandwidth connection either directly from external IP addresses or using Dynamic Routing Gateways on-premise endpoints.
These free resources are intended to encourage students, developers, and others to build prototypes of Oracle-backed applications prior to moving those workloads into production environments. Furthermore, Oracle is counting on these offerings as an incentive for businesses searching for alternatives to Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, or Microsoft Azure.
Many are surprised when they hear of Oracle offering such generous resources for free. After years of not being seen as the go-to place for tech industry goodies, this move might seem surprising at first. Yet, from a business perspective, it makes complete sense.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure free tier is available across all regions where commercial services are deployed, and users can register via their website. All contact details must remain up to date and accurate throughout this free period; one account per developer will expire after 12 months unless Oracle receives written notice to extend it, or violators may find their accounts terminated or suspended without warning from them; longtime contributor Kurt Marko wrote one last TechTarget article before his passing in January 2022; his work can be found on our contributor page.
What is the Pay-as-you-go tier?
Oracle Cloud service offers customers pay-as-they-go subscription options. These enable users to utilize all its features without incurring upfront costs and offer flexible pricing plans suited for different workloads.
This tier offers unlimited compute and storage space that automatically scales as required, as well as access to tools and services designed to make application development simpler, enabling businesses to rapidly develop, deploy, and manage cloud apps without hassles or delays.
Oracle Cloud services consist of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). Each can be deployed both privately or publicly in cloud environments to give businesses maximum flexibility; additionally, there is also a hybrid option that allows companies to run applications both on-premises hardware and in the Oracle Cloud environment.
Oracle’s cloud solutions are organized into Data Regions that correspond directly with Oracle data centers, allowing customers to choose a location best matching their site, application, and performance needs – thus helping reduce latency while increasing security.
Some of the main features of Oracle Cloud include:
Streamlined Performance: Oracle Cloud utilizes machine learning to automate repetitive tasks, enhance IT stability and DevOps support, and reduce IT-related expenses – leading to more simplified IT architecture, increased performance efficiency, and lower costs.
Unparalleled Security: The Oracle Cloud boasts a secure environment with comprehensive compliance and control features. Additionally, its extensive range of security services aimed at mitigating advanced threats – cloud access security brokers, identity management, and monitoring analytics are just some of them – offer unparalleled protection.
Oracle Cloud offers more than just security for businesses; its multiple benefits make it an attractive option. These include being used to integrate on-premise systems with programming languages supported by it, scaling, high availability, and anytime-anywhere work for employees; cost efficiency and ease of implementation make this an appealing solution for business use.
What is the Enterprise Agreement?
The Enterprise Agreement from Oracle Cloud offers its customers unrestricted deployment and use of certain products, making it more suitable for large enterprises seeking to maximize their use of its services. Unlike the Pay-as-you-go option, it has no set expiration date while also providing detailed usage reporting and usage restrictions that go beyond what can be offered through the Pay-as-you-go tier.
This agreement includes a comprehensive services environment definition that ensures you have sufficient cloud instances and capacity for your workloads and details any restrictions or rights for deployment, use, and termination of Oracle Cloud services. In addition, the agreement includes a Service Level Agreement guaranteeing uptime and availability as well as security/data protection requirements to protect the integrity of your data.
With an Enterprise Agreement, you may benefit from lower prices and greater flexibility when using Oracle Cloud services than pay-as-you-go options. However, such an arrangement requires a long-term commitment that may only fit some businesses – it can also make upgrading or downgrading subscriptions difficult as your needs evolve.
The Enterprise Agreement also offers several other advantages to your organization, including access to the Oracle Cloud Marketplace and connectivity between Oracle Cloud and other public clouds, making hybrid or multi-cloud architectures simpler and quicker to deploy. Furthermore, OCI delivers ultra-low latency performance across on-prem locations, data centers, remote offices, and edge/IoT networks for your workloads requiring low latency performance.
Oracle Cloud boasts an expansive global network of managed data centers that serve its cloud offerings. Each center is connected by a high-speed network with no more than one hop between any two locations – giving Oracle an edge in providing mission-critical workloads with minimal latency. Furthermore, its expansive suite of applications helps customers develop and extend Oracle application environments quickly and securely.
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