Amazon unveils Aurora database

Once again Amazon Web Services is taking on Oracle, the kingpin of relational databases, with Aurora, a relational database it said is as capable as “proprietary database engines at 1/10 the cost,” according to AWS SVP Andy Jassy.

This is a new battle in an older and broader war. Amazon’s RedShift took the battle for data warehousing to the incumbents Oracle, Teradata and others, a few years back.

Aurora, which will join MySQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and yes Oracle on the company’s Relational Database Service (RDS) lineup,  is compatible with MySQL, Amazon said.  It goes into preview today.

Amazon is right that customers, even big Oracle customers who hesitate to dump tried-and-true database technology are sick of Oracle’s cost structure and refusal to budge from older licensing models. Still there are very few applications that are more “sticky” than databases, which after typically contains the keys to the kingdom.

Financial institutions see their use of Oracle databases as almost a pre-requisite for compliance, although that perception may be changing.

Source:Gigaom