The News: Oracle and Google Cloud announced a partnership that gives customers the choice to combine Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and Google Cloud technologies to help accelerate their application migrations and modernization. Read the full press release on the Oracle website.
Oracle and Google Cloud Finally Tie the Interconnect Knot
Analyst Take: As we move toward enterprise AI deployments at scale, enterprises are looking at how they ingest huge volumes of data to train models and develop reference architectures that are built for performance, availability, scalability, and crucially, constrain costs. Against this backdrop, the recent announcements from Oracle speak to a wider trend that we see emerging – bring the data to the AI, not the AI to the data.
Oracle and Google Cloud’s new partnership is aimed at helping customers simplify cloud migration, multi-cloud deployment, and management. As a result, Google Cloud will offer OCI database services and high-speed interconnect with Oracle.
Google Cloud’s Cross-Connect Interconnect will be initially available for customer onboarding in 11 global regions, allowing customers to deploy general purpose workloads with no cross-cloud data transfer charges. Later this year, a new offering, Oracle Database@Google Cloud, will be available with the highest level of Oracle database and network performance, along with feature and pricing parity with OCI.
Oracle and Google Cloud Sharpen Multi-cloud and GenAI Credentials
From our view, Oracle’s strategic focus on enabling multi-cloud agility strengthens the company’s competitive position in the rapidly evolving multi-cloud era, especially as enterprise customers increase their demand for streamlined multi-cloud interconnectedness and capabilities. OCI offers a multi-cloud offering that distinguishes it from other cloud providers. Oracle’s multi-cloud strategy is crafted to provide customers with the choice and flexibility to deploy their workloads on any cloud.
OCI provides a wide range of interoperability features, including cross-cloud networking, hybrid identity, and integrated workload migration. Oracle Multi-cloud services include Oracle Database Service for Azure, Oracle Interconnect for Azure, and Oracle MySQL Heatwave on AWS and Azure, fulfilling customer prioritization of having choice in selecting the cloud provider(s) best suited for their applications and databases.
Fully validating Oracle’s multi-cloud philosophy, Oracle and Google Cloud have entered a well-anticipated partnership that gives customers the choice to combine OCI and Google Cloud technologies to help accelerate their application migrations and modernization. Specifically, Google Cloud’s Cross-Cloud Interconnect will be initially available for customer onboarding in 11 global regions, allowing customers to deploy general purpose workloads with no cross-cloud data transfer charges.
Both companies will jointly go-to-market with Oracle Database@Google Cloud, with the prime objective of benefiting enterprises worldwide and across multiple industries, including financial services, healthcare, retail, manufacturing, and more. Oracle’s Real Application Clusters (RAC) and Autonomous Database can be paired with services from Google Cloud, Azure, and AWS, according to customer needs, including interconnect assurances with Azure and now Google Cloud.
Of interest is the question of OCI supporting Google’s Bard/Gemini offering, emulating its new OpenAI/Azure relationship. For now, it’s not a specific component of the Google Cloud alliance, although OCI and Google Cloud indicated the eventual possibility of adding Google’s chatbot and related portfolio capabilities akin to the OpenAI/Azure implementation as well. Ultimately customer demand will determine such an outcome.
OCI Revs Momentum in Meeting Worldwide GenAI Demands
The partnership with Google Cloud follows on Oracle’s NVIDIA alliance. Oracle’s distributed cloud, AI infrastructure, and generative AI services, combined with NVIDIA’s accelerated computing and generative AI software, are targeted at enabling governments and enterprises to deploy AI factories. Such AI factories can run cloud services locally, and within a nation’s or organization’s secure premises with a range of operational controls, supporting sovereign goals of increasing and diversifying economic growth.
We see the combination of NVIDIA’s full-stack AI platform with Oracle’s Enterprise AI, as deployable across OCI Dedicated Region, Oracle Alloy, Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud, and Oracle Government Cloud, offering customers a robust AI solution that can deliver broader control over operations, location, and security to help support digital sovereignty.
Nations worldwide are increasingly investing in AI infrastructure that can support their cultural and economic ambitions. Across 66 cloud regions in 26 countries, customers can now access more than 100 cloud and AI services spanning infrastructure and applications to support IT migration, modernization, and innovation.
Key Takeaway: OCI and Google Cloud Uplift Multi-Cloud Cause
As we move beyond the pilot phase and into the adoption phase of the cycle – where enterprises are looking to move AI applications into production – this announcement hints at where we see the market going more generally. With the widespread adoption of Oracle databases and tools over the last few decades, the company is the home of data for many enterprises and this legacy can’t be overstated as we move into the AI era.
Overall, we believe that Oracle and Google are validating their strategic commitment to assure that multi-cloud can fulfill the top priority demand of customers to have choice and flexibility. Through interconnecting Google Cloud services with the Oracle Database portfolio, the partnership is assuredly demonstrating that they are listening and answering to their customers’ needs. By placing OCI hardware in Google Cloud data centers, both Oracle and Google position their joint customers to optimize their AI journey and capabilities.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
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Author Information
Ron is an experienced, customer-focused research expert and analyst, with over 20 years of experience in the digital and IT transformation markets, working with businesses to drive consistent revenue and sales growth.
He is a recognized authority at tracking the evolution of and identifying the key disruptive trends within the service enablement ecosystem, including a wide range of topics across software and services, infrastructure, 5G communications, Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), analytics, security, cloud computing, revenue management, and regulatory issues.
Prior to his work with The Futurum Group, Ron worked with GlobalData Technology creating syndicated and custom research across a wide variety of technical fields. His work with Current Analysis focused on the broadband and service provider infrastructure markets.
Ron holds a Master of Arts in Public Policy from University of Nevada — Las Vegas and a Bachelor of Arts in political science/government from William and Mary.
Regarded as a luminary at the intersection of technology and business transformation, Steven Dickens is the Vice President and Practice Leader for Hybrid Cloud, Infrastructure, and Operations at The Futurum Group. With a distinguished track record as a Forbes contributor and a ranking among the Top 10 Analysts by ARInsights, Steven's unique vantage point enables him to chart the nexus between emergent technologies and disruptive innovation, offering unparalleled insights for global enterprises.
Steven's expertise spans a broad spectrum of technologies that drive modern enterprises. Notable among these are open source, hybrid cloud, mission-critical infrastructure, cryptocurrencies, blockchain, and FinTech innovation. His work is foundational in aligning the strategic imperatives of C-suite executives with the practical needs of end users and technology practitioners, serving as a catalyst for optimizing the return on technology investments.
Over the years, Steven has been an integral part of industry behemoths including Broadcom, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), and IBM. His exceptional ability to pioneer multi-hundred-million-dollar products and to lead global sales teams with revenues in the same echelon has consistently demonstrated his capability for high-impact leadership.
Steven serves as a thought leader in various technology consortiums. He was a founding board member and former Chairperson of the Open Mainframe Project, under the aegis of the Linux Foundation. His role as a Board Advisor continues to shape the advocacy for open source implementations of mainframe technologies.
