Oracle and Microsoft have announced the general availability of Oracle Database Service for Microsoft Azure.
With this new offering, Microsoft Azure customers can provision, access and monitor enterprise-grade Oracle Database services in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) with a familiar experience, the company states.
Users can migrate or build new applications on Azure and then connect to high-performance and high-availability managed Oracle Database services such as Autonomous Database running on OCI.
Over the last two decades, thousands of customers have relied on Microsoft and Oracle software working well together to run their business-critical applications, the company states. As customers migrate applications and data to the cloud, they continue to look for joint solutions from their trusted software partners.
Since 2019, when Oracle and Microsoft partnered to deliver the Oracle Interconnect for Microsoft Azure, hundreds of organisations have used the secure and private interconnections in 11 global regions.
Microsoft and Oracle are extending this collaboration to further simplify the multicloud experience with Oracle Database Service for Microsoft Azure.
The Oracle Database Service for Microsoft Azure builds upon the core capabilities of the Oracle Interconnect for Azure and enables customers to more easily integrate workloads on Microsoft Azure with Oracle Database services on OCI.
Customers are not charged for using the Oracle Database Service for Microsoft Azure or for the underlying network interconnection, data egress, or data ingress between Azure and OCI. Customers will pay only for the other Azure or Oracle services they consume, such as Azure Synapse or Oracle Autonomous Database, the company states.
Corey Sanders, corporate vice president Microsoft Cloud for Industry and Global Expansion, says, “Microsoft and Oracle have a long history of working together to support the needs of our joint customers, and this partnership is an example of how we offer customer choice and flexibility as they digitally transform with cloud technology.
"Oracle's decision to select Microsoft as its preferred partner deepens the relationship between our two companies and provides customers with the assurance of working with two industry leaders.
Clay Magouyrk, executive vice president Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, says, “There's a well-known myth that you can't run real applications across two clouds. We can now dispel that myth as we give Oracle and Microsoft customers the ability to easily test and demonstrate the value of combining Oracle databases with Azure applications. There is no need for deep skills on either of our platforms or complex configurations - anyone can use the Azure Portal to harness the power of our two clouds together."
Simon Piff, vice president of IDC Asia Pacific Research, comments, “The main reason that enterprises' digital infrastructure strategies use multiple clouds is that new technologies can provide expanded opportunities to optimise their workload placement.
"These might include best-of-breed services on one platform that offer compelling functional, cost or time benefits to the enterprise, or it may mean enhanced integration with - and management of - on-premises software that runs mission-critical workloads.
"Any simplified functionality that provides secure interconnectivity between software stacks from different vendors matters significantly to CIOs, especially if it is underpinned by a meaningful service-level agreement (SLA) provided between two platforms."
With the new Oracle Database Service for Microsoft Azure, in a few clicks users can connect their Azure subscriptions to their OCI tenancy. The service automatically configures everything required to link the two cloud environments and federates Azure Active Directory identities, making it easy for Azure customers to use the service.
It also provides a familiar dashboard for Oracle Database Services on OCI using Azure terminology and monitoring with Azure Application Insights.
Customers commented on the announcement.
Jeremy Legg, chief technology officer AT-Tl “Many of our mission-critical workloads are running Oracle databases on-premises at massive scale. As we move these workloads to the cloud, Oracle Database Service for Azure enables us to modernise these Oracle databases to services such as Autonomous Database in OCI while leveraging Microsoft Azure for the application tier."
Jane Zhu, senior vice president and chief information officer Corporate Operations at Veritas, says, “Oracle Database Service for Microsoft Azure has simplified the use of a multicloud environment for data analytics. We were able to easily ingest large volumes of data hosted by Oracle Exadata Database Service on OCI to Azure Data Factory where we are using Azure Synapse for analysis."