Oracle Corporation announced on Thursday that it is incorporating generative artificial intelligence features across its suite of cloud-based corporate software offerings. This integration aims to enhance productivity and streamline workflows for users.
This will be made possible by automating tasks such as generating reports, summarizing complex data, and drafting job descriptions. Oracle’s software solutions are widely adopted by businesses worldwide for managing critical operations like finance, supply chain management, and human resources.
By infusing these offerings with advanced AI capabilities, the company seeks to provide tangible value to its customers, enabling them to save time and increase efficiency in their day-to-day operations.
Catching Up in the Cloud Race
For Oracle, a company that entered the cloud computing market relatively late, the introduction of generative AI features represents a pivotal step in its efforts to catch up with established rivals like Microsoft. The Austin, Texas-based tech giant has invested significantly to bolster its AI capabilities.
Its management has spent billions of dollars on Nvidia chips and forging a partnership with Cohere, an AI startup founded by former Google employees. Unlike consumer-facing AI applications like ChatGPT, where users directly interact with a chatbot, Oracle has taken a more targeted approach.
The company has identified around 50 specific features where its AI system has been fine-tuned to handle specialized tasks tailored to enterprise needs. For instance, AI can generate product descriptions based on company inventory system data or summarize lengthy price negotiation chains with suppliers.
Steve Miranda, Executive Vice President of Applications Development at Oracle, emphasized the company’s measured approach to AI integration.
Miranda said
We think we’ve got a broad set of use cases we think we brought on the market quickly. That’s going give us some great feedback, but it’s very much in a controlled fashion to avoid some of the issues.
Microsoft and Oracle Expand Cloud Partnership to Meet Growing Demand
Microsoft Corp. and Oracle are also strengthening their collaboration by expanding the availability of Oracle Database@Azure to meet the increasing global customer demand.
Oracle Database@Azure, which allows customers to run Oracle database services on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) hardware, is deployed in Azure data centers.
This will be introduced in five more regions, bringing the total planned multi-cloud availability to 15 regions worldwide. The expansion includes the debut of Oracle Database@Azure in Europe, starting with the Microsoft Azure Germany West Central region in Frankfurt.
This marks a significant milestone for the partnership, enabling European customers to employ Oracle database services locally, running on OCI hardware within Azure data centers for the first time. Both companies are doubling down on customer momentum, with plans to roll out the service in various regions further.
This includes Australia East, Brazil South, Canada Central, France Central, Central India, Italy North, Japan East, Southeast Asia, Sweden Central, United Kingdom South, Central United States, South Central United States, and United Arab Emirates North.
As the race to incorporate cutting-edge AI technologies intensifies, Oracle’s foray into generative AI highlights the company’s commitment to staying at the forefront of innovation.
Integrating AI capabilities into enterprise software is expected to have far-reaching implications for businesses across various industries.