Oracle Corp and Microsoft Corp today announced the general availability of Oracle Database Service for Microsoft Azure. With this new offering, Microsoft Azure customers can easily provision, access, and monitor enterprise-grade Oracle Database services in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) with a familiar experience. 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.

Offering Customers Choice with Azure and OCI Multicloud Capabilities

Over the last two decades, thousands of customers have relied on Microsoft and Oracle software working well together to run their business-critical applications. 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 organizations have used the secure and private interconnections in 11 global regions including Singapore.

Microsoft and Oracle are extending this collaboration to further simplify the multicloud experience with Oracle Database Service for Microsoft Azure. Many joint customers, including some of the world’s largest corporations such as AT&T, Marriott International, Veritas and SGS, want to choose the best services across cloud providers to optimize performance, scalability, and the ability to accelerate their business modernization efforts. 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.

“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,” said Corey Sanders, corporate vice president, Microsoft Cloud for Industry and Global Expansion.

“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,” said Clay Magouyrk, executive vice president, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

“The main reason that enterprises’ digital infrastructure strategies use multiple clouds is that new technologies can provide expanded opportunities to optimize 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,” shared Simon Piff, Vice President of IDC Asia Pacific Research.

Familiar Experience for Azure Users Combined with an Oracle Managed Service

With the new Oracle Database Service for Microsoft Azure, in just 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.

“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 modernize these Oracle databases to services such as Autonomous Database in OCI while leveraging Microsoft Azure for the application tier,” said Jeremy Legg, chief technology officer, AT&T. Watch the video.

“Multicloud architectures enable us to choose the best cloud provider for each workload based on capabilities, performance, and price. The OCI and Azure partnership integrates the capabilities of two major cloud providers, including the Oracle Database services in OCI and Azure’s application development capabilities,” said Naveen Manga, chief technology officer, Marriott International. Watch the video.

“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,” said Jane Zhu, senior vice president and chief information officer, Corporate Operations, Veritas.

“Oracle Database Service for Microsoft Azure simplifies our multicloud approach. We're going to be able to leverage the best of Oracle databases in Azure, and we are going to be able to keep our infrastructure in Azure. This is a great opportunity to have the best of the two worlds that eases our migration to the cloud and improves the skills of our people in IT,” said David Plaza, chief information officer, SGS. Watch the video.

Additional Resources

• Get started with Oracle Database Service for Microsoft Azure
• Read more about the announcement
• Read industry analyst commentary (PDF)
• Learn more about Oracle Database Services
• Learn more about Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
• Learn more about Microsoft Azure and Oracle solutions