Amazon Looking To Cut Prices And Launch A High-Speed Database

Amazon is getting ready to host its annual AWS re:Invent tech conference next week in Las Vegas, with plans of talking to customers about its popular Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing that the online retailer provides. However, there is one product rumored to be announced at the event and that is a new, super-fast "in-memory" database, according to Merrill Lynch's Justin Post. According to Post, "Amazon may announce new database products like in-memory databases or higher performance database services like Aurora (MySQL)."

An in-memory database runs in your computer's memory instead of using computer storage. In addition to that, it is also capable of processing unspeakable amounts of data at nearly instantaneous speeds, according to the description from Oracle chairman Larry Ellison on Oracle's version of this very same product. the in-memory option is one of the key ways that Oracle is convincing its customers to upgrade to its latest database, Oracle 12c.

Another big name in this industry is SAP. SAP is trying to slowly wean its business software customers off of Oracle's database and onto its own in-memory alternative, known as Hana. SAP has wagered its entire company on the Hana database, according to SAP's chairman. In addition to that, Amazon already offers a plethora of ways to run in-memory databases on its cloud as well as a variety of its own databases.

Amazon has stated that it is working on more databases. In a job listing for a database developer the company said, "These are exciting times in our space - we are growing fast, but still at an early stage and working on ambitious new initiatives where an engineer at any level can have significant technical and business impact." Should Amazon introduce a new in-memory database, it won't be good news for either Oracle or SAP.

Databases are what an entire company's operations depend on. As a result, companies don't switch them out very often or very easily. However, database vendors are also known for some pretty wicked measures to get money out of their customers. As more and more businesses jump into cloud computing, a lot of them wouldn't mind finding less-expensive database alternatives. What are these less-expensive alternatives? Amazon.

Amazon is constantly cutting prices and, as of July, it has cut AWS prices 49 times and just announced another price cut for its storage service. Amazon is also due for even more cost cuts as rumors are circulating that the company will announce them at the AWS re:Invent tech conference.

This race to cut costs has generated a pretty catchy name: The Race to Zero. This means that, at some point, some cloud providers will cut prices so low that they will be giving them away for free. Google, earlier this year, actually went ahead and did that with its free Photo app and even threw in free unlimited storage too.

While Amazon delves deeper into database services and continues to cut costs along the way, enterprises may be very happy to give this new database a try.

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Java Standard Edition 7 Finally Released by Oracle

Oracle has finally shipped Java Platform Standard Edition 7, otherwise known as Java SE 7, in what is the first major update to the programming language in over five years. Oracle let news of this out in a company announcement yesterday. This is also the very first release of Java SE under the ownership of Oracle.

According to Oracle Chief Java Architect Mark Reinhold in a webcast earlier in the month, "We all know for various business and political reasons that this release has taken some time."

According to an estimate by Oracle, some 9 million developers from around the globe use Java. Tiobe Software also estimates that Java is the most widely used programming language in the world, bumping off C and obliterating C++ with twice as many users. Over 3 billion devices around the world run Java and it is deployed by 97% of enterprise desktops worldwide. In addition to that, the Java runtime is downloaded over a billion times each year.

Since Oracle acquired Java as part of its January 2010 acquisition of Sun Microsystems, the company has come under a lot of scrutiny from a plethora of different quarters for its management. Back in December, the Apache Software Foundation withdrew its participation from the Java Community Process, stating that Oracle did not govern Java as a truly open specification. Oracle has also sued Google for "inappropriate use of Java" in Google's Android mobile OS.

According to Senior Director of Engineering for Red Hat's Middleware Business and Red Hat's Primary Liaison for the JCP Mark Little, however, "The new release is solid, though it is more of an incremental release than anything else."

The new version of Java addresses many of the trends that have overtaken the field of computer programming over the past 10 years. It offers increasingly improved support for the growing number of non-Java dynamic languages that are designed to run on Java Virtual Machine. In addition to that, it also features an API for simplifying the task of running a program across multiple processor cores. Also, the range of actions that programs can take with file systems has been vastly improved as well.

Source: Computer World - Oracle releases Java SE 7

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