Bear in mind that the "cloud" has three layers: IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.
SaaS (software as a service) involves complete IT solutions (i.e.
Salesforce, Google Calendar, NetSuite, etc), so it means the elimination
of most IT roles.
PaaS (platform as a service) basically means tools like databases, with
AWS RDS as a classic example. With PaaS migration, the cloud company is
supporting a limited set of database choices, and companies are
developing solutions with those tools.
IaaS (infrastructure as a service) basically means "servers" and
"storage", with AWS EC2 and S3 being classic examples, respectively.
With IaaS, the SysAdmin role along with the datacenter has largely been
eliminated, and DBAs, developers, and application admins are allocating
virtual machines in IaaS. Migrating to IaaS is largely no different than
migrating to different servers. The major gotcha is the OS platform, as
most IaaS vendors only support x86 servers running Linux and Windows.
Solaris, AIX, and HP-UX are largely supported only be vendor IaaS
offerings, and they will soon be extinct. With IaaS migration,
databases and applications are not "supported" by the cloud company
unless such a service is purchased additionally.
So while "most companies" are indeed migrating to the "cloud", sometimes
they are migrating to IaaS (a.k.a. someone else's servers), sometimes
they are migrating to PaaS (a.k.a. someone else's tools), and sometimes
they are migrating to SaaS (i.e. someone else's IT department).
The driving factor isn't necessarily lower cost, but more agility. As
such, production systems are certain to migrate last, but non-production
environments are certain to migrate first into what is called "hybrid
data center".
Understand which choice your company is making, and plan accordingly.
If someone says "my company isn't migrating to the cloud", then someone
is swimming in de Nile.
On 12/16/16 09:44, Mike Killough wrote:
That's a good point. I think that once there are no more premises databases, I will hit the retirement finish line anyway.
Mike
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* Dennis Williams <oracledba.williams@xxxxxxxxx>
*Sent:* Friday, December 16, 2016 10:39 AM
*To:* tim.evdbt@xxxxxxxxx
*Cc:* mwkillough@xxxxxxxxxxx; oracle-l-freelists
*Subject:* Re: Oracle DBA to PostGreSQL DBA?
All - I just saw an article stating that most companies are migrating to the cloud, so using the databases easily available and supported by the cloud company.
Dennis Williams
