We're integrating AI in all our new database solutions: Oracle’s Ashish Ray

American technology company Oracle is foundational to enterprise digital transformation. Its database technologies have powered some of the world’s most demanding business-critical applications for over four decades. With artificial intelligence (AI) emerging as a transformational force today, Oracle said, it will continue to deliver the infrastructure required to extract the full value from AI technologies.

In a conversation with TechCircle, Ashish Ray, vice president, product management for Exadata, Oracle Autonomous Database, database cloud and high-availability computing, Oracles, emphasizes the importance of a multi-cloud approach, as it enables enterprises to avoid dependence on a single cloud provider. By distributing assets, data, and services across multiple providers, scalability and efficiency are improved, while risks associated with relying solely on one provider are mitigated.

In line with this strategy, he said, Oracle is collaborating closely with Microsoft Azure to achieve seamless integration. Through the integration of Microsoft Azure regions and OCI regions at the backend, Oracle databases can now be deployed on Exadata using enterprise capabilities like real application clusters or rack insight directly in Azure.

“This integration benefits end users who are already utilising Azure for their business applications, as they can now leverage Oracle databases on Exadata without the need for multiple hops through different cloud providers,” said Ray.

Just last week, Oracle expanded its collaboration with Microsoft to meet the growing demand for Oracle Database@Azure on a global scale. To cater to enterprise customers, Oracle's cloud application will now be accessible in five additional regions, bringing the total to 15 regions worldwide, including India. This expansion allows businesses using the Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications Suite to utilise the new generative AI capabilities, enhancing both employee and customer experiences.

Ray added that the goal is to ensure a seamless and transparent end user experience by handling all the necessary backend integration work. “We will continue to invest and collaborate further with Azure to enhance this technology. Currently, our solution supports accelerated database service, and we anticipate autonomous database support to be available in the near future,” he said.

In addition, Oracle announced the general availability of its Oracle Database 23c long-term support release in October. "We believe that these advancements will greatly enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of businesses," Ray said. It will eliminate a significant amount of manual error-related work that is currently being done. It will also eliminate many tedious and burdensome tasks that businesses currently spend a lot of time and effort on. Overall, it will bring greater agility to businesses, making them more productive. This is certainly very appealing to CIOs.

The technology giant is also heavily investing in engineering innovation in the field of Gen AI. As Ray mentioned, within the Oracle database, they are developing Gen AI vector search, which means that they are integrating Gen AI vector database capabilities directly into the database.

"From an end user perspective, this means that Oracle database customers with terabytes and petabytes of data already stored in the Oracle database can benefit from Gen AI without having to acquire a completely different technology and go through the integration challenges of incorporating it into their existing environment. This area has generated a lot of interest and attention from customers," he explained.
The company is also looking at integrating JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) processing with relational database processing. JSON is text-based technology and is an easier yet structured way of transmitting data. “With this architectural innovation, customers don't have to compromise. They can still enjoy the benefits of relational database management while adopting newer technologies such as JSON without changing any applications,” said Ray.

The other area Oracle is focusing on is Exadata. Along with the Oracle database, 23C, it is working on the next generation of Exadata architecture called Exadata Exascale, Ray mentioned. This new architecture aims to bring in all the inherent accelerator storage smartness in a cloud storage manner. It is completely flexible, scalable, and elastic while retaining all the Exadata smart features that customers have traditionally used, such as smart scan and storage index, said Ray.

It goes without saying that Cloud products and services make up a significant portion of Oracle's revenue. In the third quarter of fiscal 2024, cloud services and licenses generated $32.39 billion in revenue, accounting for 83% of the company's total revenue for the quarter.