A Fresh Look at OCI: Exploring the New Oracle Cloud Interface and User Experience
- Jason Beattie
- Dec 18, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 8
Author: Jason Beattie
Introduction
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) has recently unveiled an updated user interface, giving the platform a refreshed look and feel. For both seasoned cloud architects and new users, the modernized layout improves navigation, usability, and efficiency while maintaining the robustness of OCI’s core services. Let’s take a deep dive into what’s new, what’s improved, and how you can benefit from this streamlined experience.
1. A Clean and Intuitive Layout
Upon logging into OCI, users are welcomed with a cleaner, Home Dashboard that prioritizes resources and tasks.
The interface provides a better-organized "Resources" section on the left and an action-oriented "Build" section on the right.
My Recently Viewed: A dynamic section that shows the resources you’ve interacted with the most. This is helpful for quickly accessing your most critical workloads without digging through menus.
Build Actions: Right from the home screen, you can spin up essential OCI resources like:
Compute: Create VM instances in just 2-6 minutes.
Database Services: Easily set up Autonomous Transaction Processing (ATP) or Autonomous Data Warehousing (ADW) within 3-5 minutes.
Networking: Configure networking setups quickly with guided wizards (2-3 minutes).
The new layout eliminates clutter and reduces the time needed to perform common tasks, allowing users to focus more on managing and scaling workloads.
2. Focus on Performance and Customization
Oracle has emphasized both system health and user control with this update.
Performance Insights: The “Normal performance” badge, visible at the top right, offers real-time health updates on OCI services. This provides users confidence that their services are operating optimally.
Customization: A dedicated “Customize” button allows users to personalize their home screen, pin essential resources, and streamline their view based on day-to-day requirements.
This focus on transparency and flexibility ensures that users of varying skill levels can tailor OCI to fit their needs.
3. Enhanced Resource Management
OCI’s new interface improves resource organization:
Resource Explorer: A single pane to find, manage, and organize infrastructure resources across your tenancy. Whether it’s compute instances, networking components, or databases, everything is accessible with just a few clicks.
Streamlined Access: Tabs such as “Recently Created” and “Resource Collections” further simplify access to newly provisioned or grouped resources, speeding up day-to-day operations.
4. Modern Visuals for a Better User Experience
The updated OCI theme introduces cleaner visuals, improved typography, and better spacing to enhance readability and user engagement. The interface adopts a modern cloud aesthetic with subtle contrasts and minimalistic design elements, ensuring that navigation is simple, focused, and pleasing to the eye.
5. Quick Actions for Rapid Deployment
OCI has brought frequently-used deployment tasks to the forefront. With minimal navigation, you can quickly:
Spin up new VM instances for compute-intensive workloads.
Deploy Autonomous Databases (ATP and ADW) for simplified database management.
Launch Networking Wizards for quick connectivity solutions.
These guided workflows are especially beneficial for teams looking to reduce provisioning time and operational overhead.
Conclusion
The new Oracle Cloud Infrastructure layout is a significant step forward, combining a modern user experience with enhanced functionality. By streamlining workflows, improving resource visibility, and prioritizing quick actions, OCI ensures that users can get more done with less effort.
Whether you are managing virtual machines, databases, or networking resources, this new interface reflects Oracle’s commitment to user-centric design. If you haven’t already, log in to your OCI tenancy and explore the sleek, refreshed experience for yourself.
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