The newly announced partnership allows companies to run Oracle databases and Fusion Middleware on the Verizon Cloud for an hourly fee. Customers have the choice of using their own licenses, which is the preferred option for Oracle shops, or the renting the software from the carrier and freeing up the bulk of up-front capital investment required for a traditional Red Stack. That means users can spin up databases as needed, an important step towards bringing the Verizon Cloud up to par with AWS. But Amazon RDS is still light years ahead with PostgreSQL support and advanced enterprise features like cross-region snapshotting and the ability to create isolated virtual networks with custom security policies.