What an interesting week this has been. On Monday Microsoft and Oracle announced a partnership that rocked the cloud world. Oracle will certify its software to run fully-supported on Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V and within Microsoft’s Azure cloud service. This list of software includes the Oracle Database, Weblogic, and Java. Oracle Linux will be used as the supported operating system, and will be available in Azure as preconfigured instances. The formal announcement from Oracle is located here.

Interesting. I cannot say I saw this one coming. Now for my $0.02 and various ramblings.

I think this announcement is a good thing.

First, this gives solid backing and demonstrates maturity to Microsoft’s Hyper-V and Azure offerings. I am already excited about Hyper-V and Azure, and now I can’t wait to get my hands on a trial on Azure.

I think Oracle had to do this. You could already run Oracle on Amazon AWS. Maybe Microsoft wanted to directly compete with Amazon. Azure has some tremendous momentum in the marketplace, and Microsoft is throwing all its weight behind it. Customers are moving to both of these platforms in droves, and Oracle is smart to go to all the places where the marketplace is going.

But, what about other public cloud vendors such as Google or Pivotal? How will they respond?

The only constant in the technology industry in the 21st century is rapid, unfettered change! This is an interesting development. Let’s see how the other vendors react and what time brings!