Oracle offers Always Free services to students and developers

Oracle announced Oracle Cloud Free Tier, including new Always Free services for anyone to try the self-driving database and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for an unlimited time. Organizations both large and small, developers, students, and educators can build, learn, and explore the full functionality of Oracle Autonomous Database and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, including Compute VMs, Block and Object Storage, and Load Balancer - all of the essentials for developers to build complete applications on Oracle Cloud.

While other hyperscale cloud vendors provide a free 12-month trial of their relational database and then start charging, Oracle’s Always Free Autonomous Database remains free for as long as it is used. Oracle also offers more compute and storage as Always Free services than its competitors do with their free trials. Users can upgrade easily to get more instances, larger instances, and additional services. Always Free services are available in all regions of the world and are available to anyone, including those with paid accounts using Universal Credit pricing and new Free Tier accounts.

“We are thrilled to offer Always Free Oracle Autonomous Database and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure,” said Andrew Mendelsohn, executive vice president, Database Server Technologies, Oracle. “This enables the next generation of developers, analysts, and data scientists to learn the latest database and machine learning technologies for developing powerful data-driven applications and analytics on the cloud.”

The new program enables developers to build applications using any language and framework on top of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Autonomous Database. They can get started quickly without waiting for IT to provision and learn new technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. Enterprises can use Free Tier to prototype, prove out new technologies, and do testing before moving production workloads to the cloud. They can sample robust enterprise infrastructure capabilities like load balancing and storage cloning. Additionally, students can learn how to use the latest technologies and become better prepared for their careers.

Oracle also provides free developer tools such as Oracle Application Express (APEX) for low-code Web application development, SQL Developer Web for user interaction with the database, Machine Learning Notebooks, REST interfaces for easy access and publishing of database data, and drivers for all popular programming languages. The Oracle Cloud Developer Image includes the latest tools, choice of development languages, OCI Software Development Kits (SDKs), and database connectors. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure resources can all be operated by console, REST APIs, and SDKs, or automated with Terraform.

As part of today’s news, Oracle also will be providing educators and students with the Oracle Cloud Free Tier through Oracle Academy, Oracle’s global, philanthropic educational program. Starting in early 2020, Oracle Academy Institutional members will enjoy easy signup, and educators will be able to create free accounts for their students. Additionally, Oracle Academy is developing academic curriculum on Oracle Autonomous Database and Oracle APEX.