I think you are missing the point. They chose to deploy on AWS because the 'modestly priced' instances they are talking about are gigantically less powerful than Oracle's 'appliances'.
The article is about software, algorithms and modern database technology. Oracle has basically been flogging the same code base for twenty odd years, and claiming they are competitive by running their ancient, single node system on more powerful nodes. It is pure BS. Using a modern, distributed, in-memory store like MemSQL on crap nodes (AWS), still beats the pants off Oracle's ancient single node POS running on a super-computer.
The article is about software, algorithms and modern database technology. Oracle has basically been flogging the same code base for twenty odd years, and claiming they are competitive by running their ancient, single node system on more powerful nodes. It is pure BS. Using a modern, distributed, in-memory store like MemSQL on crap nodes (AWS), still beats the pants off Oracle's ancient single node POS running on a super-computer.