Microsoft and Oracle join forces to offer inter-cloud connectivity

Oracle has partnered with Microsoft to offer interoperability across their respective cloud services. The companies say the agreement will enable customers to migrate and run the same enterprise workloads across both Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud.

Through the partnership, the pair said enterprises would be able to connect Azure services, such as Analytics and AI, to Oracle Cloud services, including Autonomous Database. By enabling customers to run one part of a workload within Azure and another part of the same workload within the Oracle Cloud, the partnership delivers a highly optimised, best-of-both-clouds experience, say Microsoft and Oracle.

Scott Guthrie, executive vice-president of Microsoft’s cloud and AI division, said: “As the cloud of choice for the enterprise, with over 95% of the Fortune 500 using Azure, we have always been, first and foremost, focused on helping our customers thrive on their digital transformation journeys.”

Don Johnson, executive vice-president, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), said: “Oracle and Microsoft have served enterprise customer needs for decades. With this partnership, our joint customers can migrate their entire set of existing applications to the cloud without having to re-architect anything, preserving the large investments they have already made.”

Organisations that run Oracle and Microsoft systems said they would find the partnership beneficial.

Ken Braud, senior vice-president and CIO at Halliburton, said: “This alliance gives us the flexibility and ongoing support to continue leveraging our standard architectures, while allowing us to focus on generating business outcomes that maximise returns for our shareholders.”

The partnership provides multicloud flexibility for organisations to support new business opportunities. Sally Gilligan, chief information officer at Gap, said: “As we look to bring our omnichannel experience closer together and transform the technology platform that powers the Gap brands, the collaboration between Oracle and Microsoft will make it easier for us to scale and deliver capabilities across channels.”