Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Reviews

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.

We migrated our in-house Oracle processing to the cloud. It's really just a database.

The flexibility is most valuable. By having our infrastructure in the cloud, we are able to spin up instances as needed and alter the capacity as needed. 

It works well, and everything is working as we expect it.

There should be more management automation.

I have been using this solution for four years.

It's very stable. There have been no outages in four years.

It's great. I can spin up as much as I'd like. We have thousands of in-house users who are working on in-house applications. 

It's being used very extensively, and we do not have great plans for increasing usage. It does what it does, and it works well, but there won't be much storage increase. We're not about to hire another 5,000 employees to use it.

It's as good as any vendor. I would rate them a four out of five.

Positive

It was pretty straightforward. The migration took about three months. Most of that time was used for testing.

We used some consultants. Our experience with them was great. They knew what they were doing. We didn't.

For deployment and maintenance purposes, I have a team of five DBAs.

It's less expensive to operate your environment in the cloud than in-house. It's a bundle cost. Everything is included in one price.

We were looking at Oracle and AWS a couple of years ago, but we moved to the Oracle Cloud because we couldn't get our in-house solution to work with AWS. We looked at migrating to a different relational database platform, but the costs were just going to be too high, and the support was not going to be there.

Cloud is the way to go. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. It does what it's advertised to do.

We use the solution to assist with project planning, cost, and build collector applications. 

Oracle has strong data centers, however, we use the fast approach with Oracle which includes the technical resources, email, and data center. 

Oracle products are easy to use. The Oracle Construction and Engineering flow is a good tool for cost control.

A good feature of the solution is the clear roadmap it provides specifically from Oracle to PC, there are good options to use OTP.

Since our Oracle products are on-premise we cannot get the premier Oracle products. Oracle releases new versions annually, but because of our license, we are using the previous version. With the solution on-premise, we can't access some applications that require access to their consulting teams.

Oracle Cloud Platform can improve their function overlap.

I have been using Oracle Cloud Platform for 17 years.

Oracle Cloud Platform is stable.

The solution is scalable. Our organization operates in multiple locations, Oracle is good for this.

Our license includes technical resources with Oracle. They maintain our application. With the help of Oracle, we perform user confirmation and other functional computer data centers.

I have contacted Oracle support for a few different issues. Overall, I would give them a three out of five. Most times when we contact Oracle, we request the development team, and they take longer than expected to resolve the concerns.

Neutral

Oracle is a software accessory service that we have a user subscription for. For example, we require the project planning license, which is a user based license. 

Considering the license required, the country and the versions, we chose the prepaid option.

I would rate this solution a ten of ten and would strongly recommend Oracle Cloud Platform. 

I mainly use this solution for our business employee side and our cloud infrastructure.

The monitoring tool and the migration from on-premise to the cloud should be much easier.

I've been working with Oracle Cloud Platform for three years.

The stability is all right.

This solution is scalable.

The initial setup was easy. It takes just a few minutes to create a virtual machine.

The pricing is reasonable.

I would rate Oracle Cloud Platform as seven out of ten.

The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a cloud-based solution.

The solution's reporting part is not good and needs more development. We get unpredictable errors when we use it. OIC needs to be developed because it is limited. For example, you can't make huge data migrations and data integrations with it.

It is hard to make a report because you can't use an SQL browser. All the other third-party products are not free, and you need to pay for them. Using Oracle's internal reporting solution for running SQL statements is a waste of time.

I have been using Oracle Cloud for two years.

I rate Oracle Cloud a two or three out of ten for stability.

Oracle Cloud is a scalable solution, but we have many performance problems. For example, when we faced an important performance problem, the solution’s scalability did not work until the problem was resolved. We waited for a month or two for the problem to be solved. Also, there are some problems with the service desk part of the Oracle Fusion.

Most of our clients for Oracle Cloud are medium-level and enterprise businesses.

I rate Oracle Cloud a six out of ten for scalability.

The solution's technical support team responds late.

Negative

The solution is cheaper compared to Oracle E-Business Suite.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is expensive and ten is cheap, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten.

Oracle Cloud has good security features that benefit our clients' operations.

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

We mainly use the solution for Oracle databases and BI purposes.

The product’s pricing should be reduced.

I have been using this solution for over five years.

I haven't experienced any instability or downtime in Oracle Cloud over the past three years.

It is scalable and suitable for large companies looking to upgrade.

I contacted their customer support when I encountered issues with my VM due to incorrect configuration of certain parameters. The support team was good.

Positive

We have not used any other solution besides Oracle Cloud.

The initial setup is straightforward to configure.

The solution is overpriced. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten with ten being expensive.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten with ten being the highest.

We use the solution to migrate the legacy infrastructure to the Oracle cloud.

I am impressed with the tool's upscaling and resiliency features.

The solution needs to improve the discovery and assessment of the existing infrastructure.

I have been working with the product for two to three years.

I would rate the tool's stability a ten out of ten.

I would rate the tool's scalability a ten out of ten.

We have dedicated premium support and it's good.

Positive

I would rate the solution's setup a seven out of ten. The tool's deployment takes around four to five hours to complete. Initial discovery and assessment should be conducted for the existing infrastructure. Post that you can conduct the migration activities.

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. The tool is a leader in cloud technology and it is very professional. It has pretty good skills and knowledge in terms of providing support during the actual migration.

The product helps us to use it as a central ERP and HCM.

The solution needs improvement in support, performance, and features. 

I have been working with the solution for four years. 

The solution is scalable. 

I would rate the tool's proactive support an eight out of ten. 

Negative

yUThe tool's implementation was straightforward and took around three months to complete. 

I would rate the solution a seven out of ten.