News

Microsoft and Oracle Partner on New 'Oracle Database at Azure' Service Offering

The partnership is said to accelerate cloud migrations and spur artificial intelligence implementations.

• By Kurt Mackie
• 09/14/2023

Microsoft and Oracle on Thursday announced "Oracle Database@Azure," a new collaborative infrastructure-as-a-service effort that lets Oracle database customers more easily tap Azure services.

The Oracle Database@Azure service was showcased during an online presentation that featured Larry Ellison, Oracle's chairman and chief technology officer, and Satya Nadella, Microsoft's chairman and CEO. In essence, the two companies have fine tuned running Oracle database services on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure on top of Microsoft Azure datacenter hardware and solutions.

Nadella referred to that fine tuning during the presentation, as follows:

Larry [Ellison] sort of pushed us hard to make sure that the latency between their datacenters and our datacenters got to a point where customers could benefit from the vision that Larry just laid out, which is, how can we use Oracle and Microsoft? Because a lot of enterprise applications have Oracle Database. They probably have some front-end middleware, even at Microsoft. And so therefore, how do you really move existing applications and build new applications?

Ellison said that the collaboration with Microsoft involved taking "all the Oracle database hardware that we use in the Oracle Cloud and all the database software using the Oracle Cloud and literally physically moving it into Azure datacenters."

Ellison noted regarding customer data that "a majority of the data has not migrated from on premises into the cloud as yet, but it will."

Nadella stressed that the partnership would help accelerate cloud migrations. It'll prompt organizations to do new things, too, such as artificial intelligence implementations, which require data, he added.

Azure is now "the only cloud provider other than Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to host Oracle services," the announcement by Corey Sanders, corporate vice president for Microsoft Cloud for industry, explained." With the partnership and integration, Azure customers have access to the Oracle Exadata Database Service, the Oracle Autonomous Database and Oracle Real Application Clusters, which use Oracle Cloud Infrastructure technology.

Customer perks from the integration, per Sanders, include:

• The ability to migrate existing Oracle databases to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure on Azure.
• Enhanced security from keeping applications and data on a single network.
• The ability to use Azure services, including using data to train artificial intelligence models.
• Management using the Azure Portal and Azure APIs.

Microsoft's press page showed the following screenshot of how Oracle Database@Azure shows up in the Azure Portal:

Ellison described Oracle's technology as being seamless on Azure, allowing access to multiple Microsoft services and AI solutions. "It's all now one multicloud system," he added.

Oracle Database@Azure will have "feature and pricing parity," per a joint press release by the companies. Purchasing will be simplified across Oracle and Azure services. Both companies are vouching for its testing and support. Oracle Database@Azure will be offered via Microsoft's Azure Marketplace online space. Existing Oracle Database licensing can be used.

Microsoft has already published this landing page for Oracle customers wanting to move their databases onto Azure infrastructure.

The announcement was accompanied by customer testimonials from Vodafone and Fidelity Investments. Other companies "expressing interest" in the integrated offerings included PepsiCo and Voya Financial, according to Microsoft.

Alysa Taylor, corporate vice president for Azure in industry at Microsoft, moderated the presentation and also interviewed Microsoft customers benefiting from the partnership. A demo was presented by Sanders.

The online presentation announcing the partnership is currently available for viewing on demand at this page.

A year ago, the two companies had announced Oracle Database Service for Microsoft Azure, in which organizations could create and migrate applications from Azure to Oracle Database Services.