Effortless Security, Breakthrough Efficiency and Straightforward Security; Oracle´s latest addition to the SPARC platform, the S7, claims to bring all of the above capabilities to the cloud platform. In an exclusive rendezvous with Anushree Dixit of EC MEA, Marshall Choy, Vice President of Systems Solutions and Oracle’s Hardware Business Unit explains how and why ´Security´ is the new performance with SPARC.
Two of the greatest concern for the modern enterprises and the SMBs have been aligning their IT goals to business and addressing the rampant skill gap in the region. The S7, a cousin to the predecessor M7, brings the SPARC microporocessor capabilities into the Oracle public loud, engineered systems and server products.
THE S7 DECODED
´Integration´ is a key aspect of the S7. “What we have done with the S7 is that we have integrated a great number of enterprise capabilities like security, efficiency and simplicity— things you typically see in a high class enterprise product is engineered into it. It reduces the cost and it provides better efficiency for users. So, the new Minicluster uses the same type of capabilities of the Super cluster but, integrated” says Marshall Choy, Vice President of Systems Solutions and Oracle’s Hardware Business Unit explains.
According to Marshall, security has been one of the prime aspect of the integration. One of the driving factors for developing the S7 was to simplify security to the level of a button push. “ No deep knowledge or expertise is required. One only needs to know how to click a mouse.” The main purpose is to integrate and bring down the very complex enterprise technologies to smaller departments within the large enterprises and SMBs.
BRIDGING THE SKILL GAP:
SPARC will be available in the region as an offering of the Oracle public cloud which enables customers to subscribe to SPARC as ´Computer as a service´ that eradicates all the administration and operational aches that were previously borne by the customers. “We also have a Managed Services offering where we effectively can put systems whether it be an engineered system or server product on to the premises of the data center of our customers, Oracle does the management or operation of that system for the customer,” added Marshall.
REVOLUTIONIZING NEXT-GEN DATA CENTER
One of the biggest innovations of the S7 is Software in Silicon. “Previous decades of computing were dominated by multi core processors. So, the two big things that we brought in with S7 is Security and data analytics. An enterprises´ most valuable asset is the data in the data center and the biggest challenge is how to make use of and analyse all the data in the data center. We have integrated security and DA into the microprocessor. With this we can significantly change the economics of how data is managed and analysed. Costumers need not buy additional hardware to secure the product.”
SECURITY AT THE CENTER
“Security is the new performance. We don’t think of security as an afterthought. We don’t have a separate team to work on security. It is a holistic thought process for us. In S7, we implemented Silicon Secured Memory. We can protect access to data held in physical memory. So, the only application authorized to access the information can retrieve it. In addition, security is further enhanced through verified boot, immutable content that prevents unauthorized changes, enforced secured updates and a trusted and secure hardware and software supply chain that does not rely on intermediaries.