As organizations embrace the cloud, they seek technologies that will transform business and improve their overall operational agility and effectiveness.

Oracle Database 12c is a next-generation database designed to meet these needs, providing a new multitenant architecture on top of a fast, scalable, reliable, and secure database platform.

By plugging into the cloud with Oracle Database 12c, customers can improve the quality and performance of applications, save time with maximum availability architecture and storage management and simplify database consolidation by managing hundreds of databases as one.
 
Oracle Database 12c introduces a new multitenant architecture that simplifies the process of consolidating databases onto the cloud; enabling customers to manage many databases as one – without changing their applications.
 
The foundation of Oracle Public Cloud Services, Oracle Database 12c can greatly benefit customers deploying private database clouds and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendors looking for the power of Oracle Database in a secure multitenant model.
 
Oracle Database 12c, optimized on SPARC and Intel® Xeon® processors, is a major release. It introduces 500 additional features and is the result of 2,500 person-years of development and 1.2 million hours of testing, plus an extensive beta program with Oracle’s customers and partners.
 
Oracle Database 12c is also co-engineered with Oracle’s world record setting SPARC T5 servers.
 
An Oracle Database 12c Webcast featuring SVP Database Server Technologies Andy Mendelsohn and architect Tom Kyte is scheduled for July 10, 2013 at 9:00 am PT.

Oracle Database 12c addresses the key challenges of customers who are consolidating databases in a private cloud model by enabling greatly improved efficiency and lower management costs, while retaining the autonomy of separate databases.
 
Oracle Multitenant is a new feature of Oracle Database 12c, and allows each database plugged into the new multitenant architecture to look and feel like a standard Oracle Database to applications; so existing applications can run unchanged.
 
By supporting multi-tenancy in the database tier, rather than the application tier, Oracle Multitenant makes all ISV applications that run on the Oracle Database ready for SaaS.
 
Oracle Multitenant manages many databases as one and can increase server resource utilization and reduce the time and effort required for database upgrades, backup, recovery, and much more.
 
The multitenant architecture provides virtually instantaneous provisioning and cloning of databases, which makes it an ideal platform for database test and development clouds.
 
Oracle Multitenant works with all Oracle Database features, including Real Application Clusters, Partitioning, Data Guard, Compression, Automatic Storage Management, Real Application Testing, Transparent Data Encryption, Database Vault, and more.

To help customers efficiently manage more data, lower storage costs and improve database performance, Oracle Database 12c introduces new Automatic Data Optimization features.
 
A Heat Map monitors database read/write activity enabling Database Administrators to easily identify the data that is hot (very active), warm (read-only) and cold (rarely read) stored in tables and partitions.
 
Using smart compression and storage tiering, Database Administrators can easily define server managed policies to automatically compress and tier OLTP, Data Warehouse and Archive data based on the activity and age of data.

Oracle Database 12c includes more security innovations than any other previous Oracle database release; helping customers address evolving threats and stringent data privacy regulations.
 
New Redaction capabilities allow organizations to protect sensitive data such as credit card numbers displayed in applications – without changes to most applications. Sensitive data is redacted at run-time based on pre-defined policies and account session information.
 
Oracle Database 12c also includes new Run-Time Privilege Analysis, enabling organizations to identify privileges and roles actually being used, helping revoke unnecessary privileges and enforce least privilege with confidence that business operations will not be disrupted.

Oracle Database 12c introduces several high availability features, as well as enhancements to existing technologies that enable continuous access to enterprise data.
 
Global Data Services offers load balancing and failover to globally distributed database configurations.
 
Data Guard Far Sync extends zero-data-loss standby protection to any distance – not limited by latency.
 
Application Continuity complements Oracle Real Application Clusters and masks application failures from end-users by automatically replaying failed transactions.

Seamless integration with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control enables administrators to easily implement and manage new Oracle Database 12c functionality including the new multitenant architecture and data redaction.
 
The comprehensive testing features of Oracle Real Application Testing can help customers validate upgrades and consolidation strategies by concurrently testing and scaling real production workloads.

Oracle Database 12c enhances in-Database MapReduce capabilities for Big Data through SQL Pattern Matching that enable immediate and scalable discovery of business event sequences such as financial transactions, network logs and clickstream logs.
 
Data scientists can better analyze enterprise information and Big Data with new in-database predictive algorithms and with further integration of open-source R with Oracle Database 12c.

“The innovations in Oracle Database 12c were developed with our customers’ cloud requirements very much in mind,” said Andrew Mendelsohn, senior vice president, Database Server Technologies, Oracle.

“The new multitenant architecture makes it easier for customers to consolidate their databases and securely manage many as one. It also offers customers other capabilities for cloud computing such as simplified provisioning, cloning and resource prioritization without resorting to major application changes.”

“Oracle’s User Group Communities actively participated in the development and testing of Oracle Database 12c,” said Michelle Malcher, President of the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG). “We are delighted to see across the board enhancements, and the new architecture will make it so much easier for customers to consolidate their databases onto the cloud.”
 
“A key challenge facing enterprise data center managers today is the cost, complexity, and inflexibility represented by the large numbers of production databases operating in fixed server configurations, most of which are substantially underutilized,” said Carl Olofson, Research Vice President for Database Management and Data Integration software research at IDC.

“It is in the nature of most enterprise database server software that those databases cannot be moved about or redeployed easily, and attempting to combine them through consolidation raises other manageability and complexity challenges for database administrators. Oracle Database 12c offers an elegant solution to this problem that not only enables deployment flexibility and eases the administration of multiple databases, but does so in a way that requires neither changes to applications nor a steep learning curve for DBAs. It also sets up the data center well for any move in the direction of Cloud Computing.”