US-based data forecasting and analysis company Trefis have been exploring the possibility of a potential market merger between Amazon and Oracle.

While a deal sounds very ambitious, Trefis believe it would represent one of the best acquisitions Amazon make, solidifying their position at the top of the cloud technology market. According to Trefis, their bold claims are based on two key rationales.

The study by Trefis highlights a theory that customers will benefit from the security of the Oracle-based Gen 2 architecture, supported by the expansive customer service offered by Amazon Web Services, resulting in a superior product to other competitors. Trefis believes the earlier advantage of AWS may be declining due to rising competition from Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and IBM strengthened by the recent acquisition of Red Hat.

Looking at the services in more detail, Trefis stated that data breaches affecting AWS customers could drive further action from Amazon. In the annual analyst meeting by Oracle, Larry Ellison actively spoke about Gen 2 architecture and its important role in managing data breaches.

The second key factor Trefis discuss is that AWS has not developed a credible database alternative to Oracle, with the capacity of managing the requirements of enterprise and start-up businesses. Whilst Oracle is moving its databases to the Oracle cloud, the software growth has not been capable of offsetting declines in other businesses. In contrast, AWS has maintained a partnership with VMware to bring AWS to on-premise systems, an area where Oracle and Microsoft have a strong lead. Trefis suggest that Oracle and AWS are a good match, based on Oracle wanting customers to move to the cloud and AWS wanting on-premise customers to expand further.

The report does raise several challenges to any potential merger involving years of rivalry, technology combination considerations, concerns of anti-competition and the overall scale of the deal.