Will Oracle Cloud Block Customers' Monitoring Tools?

By samdizzy

Oracle’s (NASDAQ: ORCL) Cloud Hosting and Delivery Policies apparently deny customers the right to use their own monitoring and testing tools to measure the availability, performance and security of Oracle’s cloud. It begs the question: Will third-party MSPs and channel partners be able to monitor SLAs (service level agreements) for Oracle’s cloud?

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, President Mark Hurd, Channel Chief Judson Althoff and other company executives described their cloud strategy during the Oracle OpenWorld conference in September 2012. Hurd even called on partners to trust Oracle with customer applications in the cloud.

Ironically, Oracle’s cloud hosting and delivery policies in some cases may block those channel partners from monitoring customers applications in the Oracle cloud. The policy states:

“Due to potential adverse impact on service performance and availability, Customer may not use its own monitoring or testing tools (including automated user interfaces and web service calls to any Oracle Cloud Service) to directly or indirectly seek to measure the availability, performance, or security of any application or feature of or service component within the services or environment. Exceptions to this are the Oracle Database Cloud Service and Oracle Java Cloud Service or if otherwise expressly permitted in the ordering document. Oracle reserves the right to remove or disable access to any tools that violate the foregoing restrictions without any liability to Customer.”

The document, dated Dec. 1, 2012, was first spotted by IT News Australia. Talkin’ Cloud was not able to reach Oracle for comment; this article was written around 11:15 p.m. ET in New York. 

For Oracle customers and third-party IT service providers, the monitoring restrictions could be of concern. MSPs, VARs and other types of channel partners are seeking new ways to generate revenue as customers shift some workloads to the cloud.

One potential option involves MSPs and VARs charging a monthly fee to monitor cloud services for customers. There are at least 20 types of cloud monitoring tools on the market for such needs. If Oracle’s cloud blocks, disables or rejects third-party monitoring tools, it could potentially limit third-party partner opportunities, Talkin’ Cloud believes.

Still, Oracle deserves equal time on this matter and we’ll be sure to pursue some more insights  during U.S. business hours on Dec. 18.