Oracle president outlines big data challenge for CIOs

Oracle president Mark Hurd has shed some light on the economic challenges CIOs face when trying to make sense of their big data.

Speaking at a press Oracle strategy briefing in central London yesterday afternoon, Hurd said the amount of data organisations generate and store is increasing by 30-40 per cent a year.

Oracle predicts the quantity of data companies stored today will be 20 times larger by 2020, he added.

You're going to see us producing proposals on Infrastructure-as-a-Service this calendar year.

"If that happens, they'll be more data than [there are] solid state disks to house it," said Hurd.

He claimed some Oracle customers are spending $10,000 per terabyte on storing data, and that it is not uncommon for the firm's customers to devote around 10 per cent of their IT budgets to storage.

"[People are storing] more big data...they want access to better information [and this is exerting] tremendous economic pressure," said Hurd.

Especially as the customer service retailers and government departments provide is constantly being scrutinised by an increasingly demanding group of consumers, he explained.

"Many of our customers are struggling with how to deal with [their] customers...and simultaneously trying to innovate and run austerity plans," said Hurd.

"The new generation is more sophisticated...and that puts tremendous demands on our customers' IT."

Hurd also used the event to flesh out some of the areas his firm is investing the $5 billion it has set aside for research and development this year, including product integration and cloud.

"You're going to see us producing proposals on Infrastructure-as-a-Service this calendar year...the core differentiation [between our cloud and the competition's] is Oracle's IP...we think our apps are the best in the world," said Hurd.

"Strategically, Oracle is working on...[being] best of breed in everything we do...Today, industry analysts [have] Oracle as the leader in 72 discreet categories...We are very confident in our product portfolio. It's very fresh," he concluded.