Microsoft, Oracle Expand Partnership in the Cloud, Including AI

Microsoft and Oracle have expanded their partnership with the launch of Oracle Database@Azure. It gives customers direct access to Oracle database services running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and deployed in Microsoft Azure data centers.

Oracle Database@Azure delivers all the performance, scale and workload availability of Oracle Database on OCI with the security, flexibility and services of Microsoft Azure, including artificial intelligence (AI) services like Azure OpenAI, the company said.

This combination provides customers with more flexibility regarding where they run their workloads. It also provides a streamlined environment for cloud purchasing and management between Oracle Database and Azure services.

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chairman and CEO, said everybody’s talking about AI, and AI exists because of data.

Microsoft’s Satya Nadella

“And when I look at anything that you do around AI, you need to have access to data,” he said. “And so to have now Oracle Database in Azure means we can take something like Azure OpenAI and take it to where the data is. So whether it is fine-tuning a model, pre-training, a model or meta-prompting a model requires that low latency access to data. And so we are very excited. I think this is the moment where data and AI coming together to transform businesses and business process, there couldn’t be a more profound timing of these two things.”

Microsoft, Oracle Helping Customers Accelerate Cloud Migration

Oracle’s Larry Ellison

“People already use multiple clouds and we’re very excited to partner with Microsoft with actually taking the Oracle hardware and the Oracle software or all the Oracle Database hardware that we use in the Oracle Cloud and all the database software we use in the Oracle Cloud and literally physically moving it into Azure data centers that will be literally co-locating the hardware and the software right in the Azure data center,” said Larry Ellison, Oracle’s chairman and CTO. “So when a customer uses Microsoft technology connected to Oracle technology, they’ll get best-in-class performance, reliability and security.”

With the introduction of Oracle Database@Azure, Oracle and Microsoft are helping customers accelerate their migration to the cloud, so they can modernize their IT environments and take advantage of Azure’s infrastructure, tooling and services.

Customers will get more options to move their Oracle databases to the cloud.

Many customers have moved partially to the cloud, Ellison noted.

“Everyone’s very excited about the cloud, but talking about it for a long time,” he said. “Actually, a majority of the data has not migrated from on premises into the cloud yet, but it will. And we’re trying to hasten that process to make it easier for customers to actually move their entire data center workload to the cloud. And that means moving all those Oracle databases, which are currently on premises into the cloud for them, everything to coexist and be easily managed.”

Providing Customers Choice

As a result of this expanded partnership, customers will have the choice to deploy their Azure services with their fully managed Oracle Database services all within a single data center, including support for Oracle Exadata database services, Oracle autonomous database services, and Oracle real application clusters (RAC). Oracle and Microsoft have also developed a joint support model to provide rapid response and resolution for mission-critical workloads.

Additionally, Oracle and Microsoft have simplified the purchasing and contracting process. Customers will be able to buy Oracle Database@Azure through Azure Marketplace, leveraging their existing Azure agreements. They will also be able to use their existing Oracle Database license benefits including bring your own license and the Oracle Support Rewards program.

Oracle will operate and manage these OCI services directly within Microsoft’s data centers globally, beginning with regions in North America and Europe.