Dive Brief:

• Oracle announced Oracle Cloud at Customer Thursday, a system designed to duplicate the Oracle Public Cloud while housed on a customer's premises. 
• Under the new system, Oracle would supply virtualized servers, storage systems and networking, but customers would have control over their own applications and machines in the cloud.
• The company will supply the hardware and software for free, charging customers the same per hour or per month pricing used with the standard Oracle Cloud.

Dive Insight:

With Cloud at Customer, Oracle wanted to give enterprises an easy option for moving to the hybrid cloud while keeping sensitive data on premises. The service takes the company's private cloud and makes it available for private use. And with competitive pricing, the solution poses a challenge to leading cloud service providers like Amazon and Microsoft Azure. 

Oracle technicians can install the technology and remotely manage the network, and enterprises have the same services available for Cloud at Customer as those available for the standard Oracle Cloud. 

Cloud service providers have continued to expand their hybrid cloud offerings, anticipating growth in an area that allows companies the flexibility to take a combined approach to the cloud, using both on-premise and third-party servers. In early March, Cisco announced plans to purchase CliQr, an application management solutions provider for hybrid cloud environments, and in late February, IBM announced a partnership with VMWare focused around hybrid cloud.