Oracle Database@Azure is a service that allows businesses to run their Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) services in Microsoft Azure datacenters. The option gives organizations the ability to combine the two companies’ services in a low-latency, high-performance environment.

The latest enhanced include the following features, per a Microsoft Azure blog post.

• Microsoft Fabric plus Oracle Database@Azure integration to fuel customer data and AI innovations.
• Integration with Microsoft Sentinel and compliance certifications to provide industry-leading security and compliance for mission-critical workloads.
• Plans to expand offering to a total of 21 primary regions, each with at least two availability zones and support for Oracle’s Maximum Availability Architecture (MAA) to deliver the highest levels of availability and resilience.
• Examples from customers joining us on stage at Oracle CloudWorld this week.

Microsoft says customers are choosing Oracle Database@Azure because of the “performance, scalability, security, and reliability” it offers, with the solution becoming a popular choice for mission-critical workloads for some of the world’s largest companies.

“With the continuing threat of ransomware, companies must adapt to rebuild their critical services and systems from scratch—not just reconstitute data into an environment that is compromised. Oracle Database@Azure is the only service that meets MSCI’s Cyber DR needs from a recovery time, security isolation, recovery point and cost perspective.”—John Rogers, Chief Information Security Officer, MSCI.

Microsoft says its new Microsoft Fabric works with Oracle Database@Azure to help drive data and AI innovation.

Microsoft Fabric is an ever-evolving, AI-powered data analytics platform that empowers customers to unify and future-proof their data estate. Fabric keeps up with the trends and seamlessly integrates each new capability so businesses can spend less time integrating and managing their data estate and more time unlocking value from their data. OCI GoldenGate offers seamless support to integrate data across dozens of data sources and targets including OneLake in Microsoft Fabric, delivering enterprise-grade, real-time data to the Microsoft ecosystem. The combination of OCI GoldenGate’s continuous, low-latency data availability in Microsoft Fabric’s comprehensive data and analytics tools, like Power BI and Copilot, enables customers to connect their essential data sources—both Oracle and non-Oracle—to drive better insights and decision-making.

Microsoft and Oracle have been making significant inroads in the cloud industry. Oracle, in particular, has become a popular option for AI workloads, thanks to its more modern cloud architecture. The enhanced integration with Microsoft Azure is sure to benefit both companies moving forward.

Oracle Corporation, once seen as a laggard in the cloud industry, is making a powerful resurgence in the artificial intelligence (AI) market. With partnerships that include tech giants such as Nvidia and Amazon Web Services (AWS), Oracle is leveraging its newfound AI momentum to accelerate its growth in the cloud computing space. The company’s shares have surged, boosted by an earnings report that surpassed Wall Street’s expectations. This revival story is a testament to Oracle’s strategic pivot into AI and cloud services, areas that are increasingly defining the future of technology.

Surprising Earnings and AI Growth Power Stock Surge

Oracle’s most recent earnings report exceeded all projections, triggering a 9% spike in the company’s stock in premarket trading. The stock is now up roughly 33% for the year, significantly outpacing competitors such as Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. The earnings for the fiscal first quarter of 2024 showed a 6.9% rise in revenue to $13.31 billion, alongside a 10% leap in profits, which stood at $2.93 billion.

CEO Safra Catz underscored how Oracle’s shift to cloud services has transformed the company’s bottom line. “As cloud services became Oracle’s largest business, both our operating income and earnings per share growth accelerated,” said Catz, emphasizing that cloud infrastructure is now at the heart of Oracle’s business model.

Oracle’s AI strategy is playing an integral role in this shift. The company reported new contracts worth $3 billion for 42 additional Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs), a clear indicator of its growing influence in AI. As AI becomes a major driver of enterprise transformation, Oracle’s cloud infrastructure is quickly emerging as a go-to solution for businesses looking to leverage this technology. Nvidia’s GPUs, essential for training AI models, have been a linchpin in Oracle’s cloud growth. “Nvidia’s GPUs are critical for the AI training workloads, and our partnership has created incredible demand for Oracle’s cloud infrastructure,” Catz added.

AI and Cloud Computing: Oracle’s Late-Mover Advantage

For years, Oracle’s competitors dominated the cloud computing space, leaving Oracle in the shadows. Oracle’s late entry into the cloud sector may have been a blessing in disguise. The company’s more modern cloud infrastructure is specifically designed to support AI workloads, a key differentiator as demand for AI processing power grows. According to Larry Ellison, Oracle’s co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, “Building giant data centers is something that Oracle has proven to be very good at. It’s the reason we’re doing so well in the AI training business.”

Ellison highlighted that Oracle’s approach is unique in that it does not compete directly with clients in the AI market, a neutral stance that has helped the company secure partnerships with some of the biggest names in tech. Microsoft, Google, and Amazon all allow Oracle’s databases to run on their clouds, and Oracle even provides the infrastructure for Microsoft’s Bing AI chatbot. The neutral positioning has attracted clients who want to avoid being upsold on proprietary cloud services. “They’re not testing out experimental things. They’re just building something that really works,” said Nick Frosst, co-founder of AI startup Cohere, which uses Oracle’s cloud services.

One of the most noteworthy partnerships Oracle has secured is with Nvidia. Nvidia selected Oracle to host its own cloud offering, which includes Nvidia’s advanced GPUs. These GPUs are critical for AI model training, a process that consumes vast amounts of computational power and resources. “Nvidia’s GPUs have been a scarce and highly sought commodity in the tech industry,” Ellison said, noting that Oracle’s data centers are well-equipped to handle the growing demand for AI training.

Strategic Alliances: Amazon, Nvidia, and Beyond

Oracle’s partnerships with Amazon and Nvidia are central to its current success. The company recently announced a strategic partnership with Amazon Web Services, which will allow customers to access Oracle’s Autonomous Database and Exadata Database Service on AWS infrastructure. The deal gives Oracle a foothold in one of the world’s largest cloud ecosystems. Larry Ellison spoke enthusiastically about the deal, stating, “We are seeing huge demand from customers that want to use multiple clouds. Amazon and Oracle are seamlessly connecting AWS services with the very latest Oracle Database technology.”

AWS CEO Matt Garman echoed Ellison’s sentiment, noting, “This new, deeper partnership will provide Oracle Database services within AWS to allow customers to take advantage of the flexibility, reliability, and scalability of the world’s most widely adopted cloud.”

These partnerships reflect Oracle’s strategic pivot toward offering a hybrid cloud environment, which allows companies to run Oracle databases on their preferred cloud platforms. In addition to AWS, Oracle has inked similar deals with Microsoft and Google, making Oracle’s cloud a popular choice for enterprise customers looking to leverage AI and machine learning tools across multiple platforms.

AI as a Long-Term Growth Driver

Oracle’s transformation is largely driven by the explosive growth in artificial intelligence, and the company is capitalizing on this trend. A recent Morgan Stanley report estimated that AI will grow to represent more than half of Oracle’s total cloud revenue by 2027, a significant leap from its current 15%. Larry Ellison remains confident that AI demand will continue to grow, stating, “There’s no slowdown or shift coming. This business is just growing larger and larger and larger.”

One reason for this optimism is the sheer scale of investment needed to build advanced AI models. Ellison remarked, “The entry price for a real frontier model is about $100 billion over the next 4 to 5 years. That’s a lot of money, and it doesn’t get easier.” Given the high cost and complexity of developing AI, Oracle’s modern data centers are well-positioned to capture market share as businesses increasingly turn to AI to drive growth.

However, some analysts have raised concerns about the sustainability of this growth. Brad Reback, an analyst at Stifel, warned that the demand for AI training could be transitory, particularly as competitors build more AI-specific data centers. “I do wonder whether Oracle can sustain what I view as a transitory architecture lead,” Reback said, questioning whether Oracle’s current momentum can be maintained over the long term.

Tech Investors Love the New Oracle

Oracle’s recent moves in the AI and cloud markets have garnered significant attention from tech investors, who are increasingly bullish on the company’s prospects. The buzz around Oracle’s AI initiatives and partnerships with Nvidia and Amazon is clear from investor sentiment on social media, where influential voices are weighing in on the company’s strategy and future.

Ben Pouladian, a noted tech analyst, emphasized Oracle’s methodical approach to scaling AI infrastructure, comparing it to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites in terms of consistency. “Oracle has more demand than supply, scaling through the same AI automation they sell. The key? Repeating the exact same process—just like Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites or In-N-Out burgers, every data center is identical no matter the location,” he tweeted. This highlights Oracle’s disciplined strategy in building AI-ready data centers, which has been crucial to meeting the surge in demand for AI-powered cloud services.

Another tech influencer, Amy Marlow, praised Oracle’s focus on AI, tweeting, “Oracle’s strong earnings and new cloud services show they’re ready to compete in the AI market.” This sentiment is shared by investors who are excited about Oracle’s ability to pivot successfully toward AI and cloud, further evidenced by the 33% year-to-date increase in the company’s stock.

Larry Ellison’s vision for AI at Oracle is also resonating with the investment community. Ellison made a bold statement during the company’s earnings call, noting, “The entry price for a real frontier AI model is about $100 billion. That’s a lot of money, and it doesn’t get easier.” His remarks underline the capital intensity and exclusivity of the AI market, which has positioned Oracle as a critical player. Investors see this as a competitive advantage, particularly in light of the company’s strong partnerships and growing demand for AI infrastructure.

For those who have followed Oracle’s journey, it’s clear that the company is shedding its legacy image and emerging as a key enabler of AI technologies. As one investor tweeted, “Until people understand AI is not an application, but a way of computing that will live in all technology, they won’t understand the magnitude of what is going on.”

The combination of strong financial results, strategic AI partnerships, and consistent execution in cloud services has driven a wave of positive sentiment among investors. Oracle, once perceived as a laggard in the tech space, is now a stock to watch in the eyes of the tech investment community.

Oracle’s AI Renaissance

Oracle’s transformation from a cloud laggard to an AI powerhouse is a testament to the company’s strategic focus and partnerships. By aligning itself with tech giants like Amazon and Nvidia, and by investing heavily in AI infrastructure, Oracle has positioned itself as a key player in the AI revolution. Its financial performance reflects this resurgence, with strong earnings growth and a stock price that continues to climb.

As AI reshapes industries and economies, Oracle’s ability to sustain this momentum will depend on its continued innovation and its ability to meet the growing demands of AI developers. For now, Oracle’s AI-powered resurgence is proving that even tech giants from a bygone era can rise again—if they have the right strategy in place.

IBM has been steadily transforming itself into a leading hybrid and multi-cloud cloud provider, snapping up a number of startups and companies as it works toward that goal. Accelalpha is the latest acquisition, expanding IBM’s Oracle support.

Accelalpha has a long history of supporting Oracle, and has chalked up some notable firsts.

Accelalpha’s consultants bring expertise across the Oracle Cloud Applications Suite including Oracle Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Logistics, Oracle Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Oracle Cloud Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Oracle Cloud Customer Transformation (CX), and Oracle Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ). As an Oracle Cloud Excellence Certified Implementer, Accelalpha boasts the largest Oracle logistics practice globally and was the first Oracle partner to implement Oracle Fusion Financials. Since its founding in 2009, Accelalpha has grown organically and through acquisition. Notable past acquisitions include Prolog Partners, Key Performance Ideas, LogistiChange and Frontera Consulting.

“Many enterprises depend on Oracle to run the workflows that are at the heart of their enterprise,” said Kelly Chambliss, Senior Vice President, IBM Consulting, Americas. “With our acquisition of Accelalpha, IBM will be even better positioned to help our clients deploy and manage Oracle solutions, including generative AI and cloud technology, for competitive advantage.”

“IBM’s client and employee-centric culture and long-established scale and reach in more than 175 countries is a great fit for the next stage of our growth,” said Nat Ganesh, CEO, Accelalpha. “We’re thrilled to bring our expertise in Oracle Cloud solutions and targeted domain and industry knowledge to bear together with IBM’s strength in generative AI and hybrid cloud. With Accelalpha’s history of being a pioneer in Oracle Cloud and IBM’s deep-rooted dedication to innovation that matters, we can further accelerate value creation for our clients.”

IBM did not disclose the terms of the deal.

Google is currently the third-largest cloud provider in the world, behind AWS and Microsoft. CEO Thomas Kurian has made no secret of his intention to overtake Microsoft for the second spot, but those ambitions have yet come to fruition, or even threaten to do so. Meanwhile, Oracle usually usually places sixth or seventh, depending on various factors.

The two companies clearly see the benefit of teaming up, making it easier for customers to run their workflows across the two platforms, as emphasized by Google’s Gurmeet (GG) Goindi and Oracle’s Karan Batta:

It provides a rich set of interoperable solutions that make it easy for our joint customers to migrate, modernize, and manage their Oracle-based applications in the cloud. With unified engineering, product, and commercial model, these integrated solutions deliver choice and flexibility backed by the end-to-end enterprise-class collaborative support model that our joint customers have relied on over the years. At the core of this partnership is the Oracle Database@Google Cloud. Oracle will directly host, operate and manage Oracle database services natively within and from the Google Cloud data centers, beginning with regional footprints in North America and Europe, and plans to rapidly expand globally.

The executives says customers have been asking for a unified framework between the two companies for year:

Over the years, joint enterprise customers expressed interest in a unified framework that allows them to continue to benefit from Oracle’s database and enterprise application offerings while seamlessly complemented with Google Cloud offerings and AI solutions such as Gemini and Vertex AI to modernize and accelerate cloud migrations. However, as customers explored the existing multi-vendor, multi-cloud options, these solutions lacked sufficient choice and the native integration options to meet customers’ technical and commercial requirements. Customers had to further deal with additional costs such as cross-cloud data transfer charges, or the lack of end-to-end enterprise-grade support for these architectures.

Customers will be able to connect Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and Google Cloud without paying cross-cloud data transfer chargers, and the two companies will support running Oracle app on Google Cloud.

We are tremendously excited about the opportunities this partnership unlocks for our customers. We are committed to continue innovating around these unified solutions on our customers’ behalf with a focus on delivering cost-effective choices that can meet the performance, availability and security requirements of their most demanding applications and database workloads.

Musk’s xAI originally tapped Oracle to help it deploy 24,000 H100s that were used to train its Grok 2 model. According to Musk, however, the company plans to go its own way, building out its own cluster containing some 100,000 H100s. Musk framed the decision in the context of needing to leapfrog its AI rivals, with controlling its own cluster being the key to doing so.

xAI contracted for 24k H100s from Oracle and Grok 2 trained on those. Grok 2 is going through finetuning and bug fixes. Probably ready to release next month.

xAI is building the 100k H100 system itself for fastest time to completion. Aiming to begin training later this month. It will be the most powerful training cluster in the world by a large margin.

The reason we decided to do the 100k H100 and next major system internally was that our fundamental competitiveness depends on being faster than any other AI company. This is the only way to catch up.

Oracle is a great company and there is another company that shows promise also involved in that OpenAI GB200 cluster, but, when our fate depends on being the fastest by far, we must have our own hands on the steering wheel, rather than be a backseat driver.

Elon Musk (@elonmusk) | July 9, 2024

The move is a blow to Oracle. As Investors.com points out, Oracle founder Larry Ellison touted its relationship with xAI in a recent quarterly earnings call, saying his company was working to secure more H100s for the startup.

“We gave them quite a few,” Ellison said at the time. “But they wanted more, and we are in the process of getting them more.”

As recently as 2022, Oracle’s advertising business was reported to be generating as much as $2 billion in revenue. Despite Oracle investing heavily in the division, advertising revenue decreased significantly in the last couple of years, leading the company to exit the business.

The news was revealed in an earnings call (transcript provided by AdWeek):

“Before I discuss my guidance for Q1 and fiscal 2025, I do just want you to have a couple of notes,” said CEO Safra Catz. “The first is that, in Q4, we decided to exit the advertising business, which had declined to about $300 million in revenue in fiscal year ’24.”

Oracle has been making significant headway in the cloud infrastructure market, recently revealing that it cannot keep up with demand. The company has also inked deals with OpenAI and Google Cloud to provide additional cloud infrastructure to those companies.

Despite its successes, it appears the company simply couldn’t compete effectively in the advertising market.

OpenAI has a close working relationship with Microsoft, who is also its biggest investor. The company’s tech powers Microsoft Copilot and Bing’s AI search capabilities. OpenAI’s models also feature prominently in Microsoft’s Azure AI platform.

The choice to tap Oracle for additional capacity is an interesting one, and a testament to the performance and power of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

OCI’s leading AI infrastructure is advancing AI innovation. OpenAI will join thousands of AI innovators across industries worldwide that run their AI workloads on OCI AI infrastructure. Adept, Modal, MosaicML, NVIDIA, Reka, Suno, Together AI, Twelve Labs, xAI, and others use OCI Supercluster to train and inference next-generation AI models.

“We are delighted to be working with Microsoft and Oracle. OCI will extend Azure’s platform and enable OpenAI to continue to scale,” said Sam Altman, Chief Executive Officer, OpenAI.

“The race to build the world’s greatest large language model is on, and it is fueling unlimited demand for Oracle’s Gen2 AI infrastructure,” said Larry Ellison, Oracle Chairman and CTO. “Leaders like OpenAI are choosing OCI because it is the world’s fastest and most cost-effective AI infrastructure.”

Oracle has become an increasingly important cloud infrastructure provider. In fact, at a recent quarterly earnings report, executives said the company was struggling to keep up with the demand.

“Large new cloud infrastructure contracts signed in Q3 drove Oracle’s total Remaining Performance Obligations up 29% to over $80 billion—an all-time record,“ Oracle CEO Safra Catz said at the time. “We expect to continue receiving large contracts reserving cloud infrastructure capacity because the demand for our Gen2 AI infrastructure substantially exceeds supply—despite the fact we are opening new and expanding existing cloud datacenters very, very rapidly.

Larry Ellison has long touted Oracle Cloud’s reliability, saying it represents a major advantage over its larger rivals.

“Let me close with a note that I’m going to paraphrase from a very large telecommunications company who uses our cloud and all the other three North American clouds — Google, Amazon and Microsoft,” Ellison once said. “And the note basically said the one thing we’ve noticed about Oracle, Oracle’s cloud, is that it never ever goes down. We can’t say that about any of the other clouds. We think this is a critical differentiator.”

Oracle says Google Cloud’s Cross-Cloud INterconnect will initially be available in 11 global regions for onboarding customers. Later this year, Oracle Database@Google Cloud will be available, offering “highest level of Oracle database and network performance, along with feature and pricing parity with OCI.” Oracle and Google will both provide Oracle Database@Google Cloud.

Oracle will operate and manage Oracle database services directly within Google Cloud datacenters globally, beginning with regions in North America and Europe. Oracle Exadata Database Service, Oracle Autonomous Database Service, and Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) will launch later this year across four regions—US East (Ashburn), US West (Salt Lake City), UK South (London), and Germany Central (Frankfurt)—and then rapidly expand to additional regions worldwide.

“Customers want the flexibility to use multiple clouds,” said Larry Ellison, Oracle Chairman and CTO. “To meet this growing demand, Google and Oracle are seamlessly connecting Google Cloud services with the very latest Oracle Database technology. By putting Oracle Cloud Infrastructure hardware in Google Cloud datacenters, customers can benefit from the best possible database and network performance.

“Oracle and Google Cloud have many joint enterprise customers,” said Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet. “This new partnership will help these customers use Oracle database and applications in concert with Google Cloud’s innovative platform and AI capabilities.”

The deal is good news for Oracle, especially as the company continues to vie for cloud share in a market dominated by AWS, Microsoft, and Google Cloud.

HashiCorp surprised the open-source community when it announced it was changing Terraform’s license to the Business Source License. As a popular infrastructure-as-code DevOps solution, the licensing change had significant ramifications, leading The Linux Foundation to fork the project and create OpenTofu.

Oracle’s Terri Noyes, Product Management Director, outlined the change.

Our latest Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) Cloud Manager update, 24.1.1.1, is now available.

In this release, we have updated the versions of key Cloud Manager technology stack components to maintain security standards and improve supportability.

In addition, we have switched from using the Terraform infrastructure as code tool to OpenTofu. Note that this does not impact Cloud Manager functionality.

We highly recommend that you uptake this new 24.1.1.1 release of Cloud Manager at your earliest convenience.

Oracle’s adoption of OpenTofu is a major win for the fledgling project and a warning shot HashiCorp would do well to heed.

In a recent interview, Mr. Nguyen shed light on the bank’s ambitious migration to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and its profound impact on Techcom Bank’s operations.

“Before we even moved to AWS, we were on very old legacy systems,” Mr. Nguyen explained. “So when we decided to move to AWS, we had to move all of those systems into the cloud as well.”

The challenge was formidable: seamlessly transitioning critical banking systems to the cloud without disrupting business operations. However, armed with a strategic vision and a commitment to innovation, Mr. Nguyen and his team embarked on the arduous task.

“Within 18 months of signing the contract and partnering with AWS, we were able to migrate 60% of our workload onto AWS,” Mr. Nguyen proudly shared. This feat, achieved in a relatively short timeframe, speaks volumes about the bank’s determination and the effectiveness of the migration process.

The key systems successfully migrated to AWS are Oracle Fraud Detection, Anti-Money Laundering (AML), and Oracle Financial Services Analytical Application (OFSAA). These critical components form the backbone of Techcom Bank’s operations, safeguarding against financial fraud and ensuring regulatory compliance.

The migration’s benefits extend beyond mere technological upgrades. Mr. Nguyen noted a significant uptick in productivity and agility among bank staff. “People are getting more agile, nimble, self-serving, and more self-initiative in what they need,” he remarked. This newfound empowerment has ushered in a culture of innovation and efficiency within the organization.

Moreover, Techcom Bank’s migration to AWS has yielded tangible cost savings. “We were able to reduce costs by up to 20% if managed correctly,” Mr. Nguyen revealed. These savings, coupled with improved operational efficiencies, underscore the bank’s financial prudence in embracing cloud technology.

The partnership with AWS professional services is central to the migration’s success. “The AWS professional services have partnered with us from day one,” Mr. Nguyen emphasized. Their expertise and support have been instrumental in navigating the complexities of cloud migration and ensuring a smooth transition.

Looking ahead, Mr. Nguyen remains optimistic about Techcom Bank’s future in the cloud. “The uptime has been significantly improved,” he noted, highlighting the reliability and resilience of AWS infrastructure. With the cloud business office and structured migration processes in place, the bank is poised to continue its journey of innovation and growth in the digital era.

As Techcom Bank blazes a trail of technological innovation in Vietnam’s banking sector, its partnership with AWS stands as a testament to cloud technology’s transformative power. In an industry where adaptability is paramount, Techcom Bank has demonstrated its readiness to embrace change and chart a course toward a more agile and resilient future.

Java 22, also known as Oracle JDK 22, is a testament to Oracle’s unwavering commitment to empowering developers and organizations worldwide. Georges Saab, Senior Vice President of Oracle Java Platform and Chair of the OpenJDK Governing Board, expressed enthusiasm for the advancements introduced in Java 22, stating, “The new enhancements in Java 22 enable more developers to quickly and easily build and deliver feature-rich, scalable, and secure applications to help organizations across the globe grow their businesses.”

At the heart of Java 22 lie 12 JDK Enhancement Proposals (JEPs), meticulously crafted to enhance various facets of the Java language, APIs, and tools encompassed within the Java Development Kit (JDK). These enhancements span diverse functionalities, catering to the evolving needs of developers and organizations alike.

One of the cornerstones of Java 22 is integrating features from Project Amber, Project Loom, and Project Panama. Project Amber introduces several language enhancements, including Statements before super(…), Unnamed Variables and Patterns, String Templates, Implicitly Declared Classes, and Instance Main Methods. These additions simplify development workflows and enhance code readability and maintainability.

With its Structured Concurrency and Scoped Values features, Project Loom revolutionizes concurrent programming paradigms, offering developers enhanced error handling and observability capabilities. Similarly, Project Panama introduces the Foreign Function & Memory API and the Vector API, facilitating seamless interoperability with native code and delivering superior performance for vector computations.

Furthermore, Java 22 introduces significant updates to core libraries and tools, such as the Class-File API, Launch Multi-File Source-Code Programs, and Stream Gatherers. These enhancements empower developers with enhanced flexibility and productivity, simplifying complex tasks and boosting overall development efficiency.

Performance remains a focal point in Java 22, with the introduction of Region Pinning for G1. This feature reduces latency during garbage collection, enhancing system responsiveness and overall performance.

The release of Java 22 underscores Oracle’s steadfast commitment to driving innovation and fostering collaboration within the global Java community. By actively engaging with stakeholders through initiatives such as OpenJDK and the Java Community Process (JCP), Oracle continues to shape the future of Java, ensuring its relevance and longevity in an ever-evolving technological landscape.

“Java’s versatility and comprehensive toolset enable it to support the development of production-grade, mission-critical applications at scale, which positions it as a key enabling technology for innovative use cases such as generative AI,” remarked Arnal Dayaratna, Research Vice President of Software Development at IDC, highlighting the significance of Java’s continued evolution.

Mala Gupta, Java developer advocate at JetBrains, expressed her excitement about Java 22’s features designed to cater to developers of all skill levels. “Java is embracing a minimalist approach by continuing to reduce ceremonies around writing initial steps of code,” she said. “With constructor makeover (statements before super[…]), Java has proven again that it supports responsible innovation, and relaxing language constraints that existed from Java’s version 1.0 without breaking any existing code is very exciting.”

Tom Snyder, Oracle’s Vice President of Engineering for enterprise cloud-native Java, emphasized the tangible benefits of Java 22 for users of the Helidon web server. “The Helidon team recognized the value of virtual threads as soon as they were announced,” Snyder explained. “With Helidon 4, the team rewrote the Helidon web server to natively use virtual threads, which resulted in much better performance and increased developer productivity.”

As organizations navigate the complexities of digital transformation, Java remains a cornerstone of innovation. It enables businesses to harness the power of technology and drive growth. With Java 22, developers are empowered to unlock new possibilities, paving the way for a future of creativity, efficiency, and technological excellence.

Nvidia has been leading the charge on AI, with its GPUs and chips powering large language models across the industry. The company says its new platform supports “real-time generative AI on trillion-parameter large language models,” while delivering up to 25x less cost and energy performance compared to previous generations.

“For three decades we’ve pursued accelerated computing, with the goal of enabling transformative breakthroughs like deep learning and AI,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “Generative AI is the defining technology of our time. Blackwell is the engine to power this new industrial revolution. Working with the most dynamic companies in the world, we will realize the promise of AI for every industry.”

The new architecture includes “six transformative technologies” that will help companies deploy generative AI, quantum computing, computer-aided drug design, and more.

Nvidia expects a number of major companies to adopt Blackwell.

“Oracle’s close collaboration with NVIDIA will enable qualitative and quantitative breakthroughs in AI, machine learning and data analytics,” said Larry Ellison, chairman and CTO of Oracle. “In order for customers to uncover more actionable insights, an even more powerful engine like Blackwell is needed, which is purpose-built for accelerated computing and generative AI.”

“Generative AI is critical to creating smarter, more reliable and efficient systems,” said Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell Technologies. “Dell Technologies and NVIDIA are working together to shape the future of technology. With the launch of Blackwell, we will continue to deliver the next-generation of accelerated products and services to our customers, providing them with the tools they need to drive innovation across industries.”

“We are committed to offering our customers the most advanced infrastructure to power their AI workloads,” Satya Nadella, executive chairman and CEO of Microsoft. “By bringing the GB200 Grace Blackwell processor to our datacenters globally, we are building on our long-standing history of optimizing NVIDIA GPUs for our cloud, as we make the promise of AI real for organizations everywhere.”

Nvidia says AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle will be the first companies to offer Blackwell-powered cloud instances, as well as Applied Digital, CoreWeave, Crusoe, IBM Cloud and Lambda.

Oracle has long been the dominant player in the database market. Even as the cloud has grown in importance, Oracle has managed to carve out a meaningful share of the market, thanks in large part to the strength of its database platform. Many customers see it as a full turn-key solution, combining the cloud and database solutions necessary. In spite of that, according to a report by Bloomberg, Oracle’s database dominance may be under threat from cloud-first rivals.

Bloomberg cites the example of Shutterfly, which recently made the decision to move its database to the cloud. Despite relying on Oracle for years, the company decided to go in a different direction with the transition.

Read more: Larry Ellison Touts Oracle Cloud’s Reliability in Wake of AWS Outage

“The amount of time and energy that was consumed purely running just the plumbing was immense,” Chief Technology Officer Moudy Elbayadi said in an interview. A review of the existing options on the market led Shutterfly to conclude that Oracle’s solutions didn’t “fit our desires to have that level of openness and flexibility,” Elbayadi added.

Unfortunately for Oracle, Shutterfly isn’t an isolated example. JPMorgan, Nasdaq Inc, JetBlue Airways Corp, and Automatic Data Process Inc are among the list of companies transitioning to non-Oracle options.

“We have actually quite rapidly been reducing our Oracle footprint,” said Nikolai Larbalestier, Nasdaq’s senior vice president of cloud strategy and enterprise architecture. “There are plenty of good alternatives today.”

Part of the problem stems from the complexity involved in running Oracle’s database and the cost to the client company of doing so. Mythical Games CEO John Linden emphasized the issue, despite his firm being valued at $1.2 billion.

“Oracle hits us up every week,” he said. But “we’d have to have a massive team in place to run it appropriately.”

See also: Google, Microsoft, and Oracle Had the Most Vulnerabilities in Early 2021

Just as significant, Oracle’s tools seem to be developing a reputation for not being up to par with the latest developments, making the prospect of working with them unappealing to many developers.

“I can’t even hire people if I told them that we majorly use Oracle,” Yao Morin, chief data officer at JLL Technologies, told Bloomberg. “People are yearning for better tools.”

To be clear, Oracle is still the company to beat in the database market, especially among companies that want on-premise database solutions. Nonetheless, the company clearly has some significant areas it needs to improve on if it wants to remain relevant in the coming years. Otherwise, it may find itself in the same situation as IBM when personal computers replaced mainframes — the undisputed leader of a niche market.

Mark Sunday, CIO of Oracle, discussed the increasing need for enterprises to take a holistic, comprehensive, and automated approach towards information security in an interview with Michael Krigsman of CXOTALK:

Security is Increasingly a Big Part of the Discussion

It’s really been interesting to see the dramatic change in the awareness around security. Quite frankly, the threats have gotten much greater. Security is increasingly a big part of the discussion. If I look at the one area that my organization has increased year on year on year, it’s what we’re investing in security. We’re the norm in that. We’re not the exception. Then also the increased sophistication of the threats, the increased sophistication of the tooling, and so forth required, is putting more and more focus on this. It really becomes job one.

I think that boards have now become aware and that they are accountable to assure that the people, the processes, the technology, that all the steps that one needs to do in order to ensure the integrity, confidentially, privacy, and security, of not only a customer’s data, the company’s data, but in fact the employees data as well.

Security is Not Just the Role of the CIO

Security is getting its place at the table, whether it’s within the IT organizations, at the corporate level, or at the board level. Security has always been something that’s been out there, something that we’ve had to take into account, but more recently there have certainly been more high profile incidents that have highlighted just what the impact of security can have. But also it’s been highlighted that you need to have the focus that security is not just the role of the CIO, not just the role of the CISO, but it’s everyone’s responsibility.

It begins with making people aware of what they need to do, what the threats and the vulnerabilities are, and what their role is in defending against that. Security needs to be built into every line of code we write, every configuration we enable, every computer that we manage the configuration asset the patching level on and the updates on. It affects essentially most roles within the organization.

Every Enterprise Has the Security it Deserves

Just given the scale, size, complexity, and the opportunity for human error, you really need to take a holistic, comprehensive, and automated approach towards how you deal with configuration management, change management, and vulnerability management. All of these are key aspects. It’s very difficult if it’s done you know manually. You have to look at a comprehensive program that allows you to simplify, standardize, centralize, and automate all the aspects of how you deal with those things that you know could expose your company to security and privacy concerns.

Every Enterprise has the security it deserves. It begins at the very top. It truly begins with the board, CEO, the Executive Committee, to set the culture and to ensure that the people, process, technology, and the governance processes are in place to ensure the security of customers, companies, and employees information.

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BCC has had a controversial few years, settling a massive equal pay lawsuit that has taken a toll on Europe’s largest local authority. According to BBC News, the BCC admitted in June that “the £760m equal pay liability was not only equivalent to the entire annual spending on services but was growing each month.”

To make matters worse, the BCC has been in the midst of migrating from a custom SAP setup to one based on Oracle, to handle its HR and finance operations. Unfortunately, the cost of the project has skyrocketed to £100 million from the initial £20 million it was supposed to cost.

According to BirminghamLive, new city council leader John Cotton says Oracle is not to blame, instead blaming poor implementation for the massive cost overrun:

But we do know that there is an issue with how the system is then tracking our financial transactions and HR transactions issues as well. That’s got to be fixed.

I’ve been really clear with the officers since coming in as leader that I expect them to be responsible for fixing this system and ensure it is properly implemented and be accountable for how they go about doing that. I’m also putting in strengthened governance arrangements to ensure accountability to myself as the leader and to the wider Cabinet team.

What we now know from the work that we’ve done is that this can and will be fixed, but there is a price tag that’s attached to that. We’ve been advised that could be up to £100 million to fix and fully implement the system.

I am clear that must not impact frontline services.

The BCC is providing a perfect example of how important it is to pick the right tool for the right job…something it clearly did not do.

Users looking to download the latest version of VirtualBox are in for a disappointment, with Oracle removing the downloads links to 7.0.10.

VirtualBox is a popular cross-platform virtualization option, giving users the ability to run guest operating systems in virtual machines at near-native speed. The latest version, 7.0.10, was well received and included support a number of major new features and performance enhancements.

Unfortunately, the download links for 7.0.10 have disappeared from the VirtualBox website. There has been no official notification or reason given.

We will update with more information as it becomes available.

Red Hat angered customers and the broader Linux community when it announced that RHEL source code would be restricted to paying customers and bound by an agreement that customers would not share or re-distribute such code. The move was widely seen as an attack on Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, and Oracle Linux, distros that offer 1:1 compatibility with RHEL. Many have also stated that Red Hat’s actions violate the GPL, at least in spirit, if not also in letter.

SUSE quickly responded to emphasize its commitment to open source principles and distance itself from Red Hat. The German company is now taking it a step further, with plans to fork RHEL to offer customers a viable option without having to get locked into Red Hat’s ecosystem.

Read More: Oracle Calls Out Red Hat and IBM Over RHEL Source Code

SUSE says the new distro will be “available to all without restrictions,” and the company plans to invest $10 million over the next few years to help fund its development.

“For decades, collaboration and shared success have been the building blocks of our open source community,” said Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen, CEO of SUSE. “We have a responsibility to defend these values. This investment will preserve the flow of innovation for years to come and ensures that customers and community alike are not subjected to vendor lock-in and have genuine choice tomorrow as well as today.”

The new distro will not replace SUSE’s own SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE). In fact, SLE is already used by 60% of Fortune 500 companies, so there is little motivation to replace it. However, the decision acknowledges that many companies run mixed Linux environments and need freedom from vendor lock-in.

“This collaborative effort demonstrates SUSE’s deep-rooted commitment to fostering innovation and nurturing community-driven development, and it reinforces the fundamental values of open source software. We invite the community to actively engage and collaborate in shaping the future of this essential software,” said Dr. Thomas Di Giacomo, Chief Technology and Product Officer, SUSE. “We firmly believe this new RHEL-compatible Linux distribution, together with SUSE’s portfolio, will help the community and customers navigate unprecedented advancements in enterprise Linux, cloud computing, containerization, edge, AI/ML and other emerging technologies.”

See Also: Red Hat Continues Damage Control, Clarifies Term ‘Freeloader’

SUSE already has an ally in Rocky Linux’s Gregory Kurtzer. Kurtzer co-founded CentOS, another distro that provided 1:1 compatibility with RHEL before Red Hat purchased it and killed it off. The company replaced it with CentOS Stream, which it positioned upstream of RHEL. That makes CentOS Stream essentially a test version of what becomes RHEL rather than offering 1:1 compatibility with it. In response to Red Hat’s actions, Kurtzer founded Rocky Linux to deliver on CentOS’ original goals.

“The enterprise Linux community requires standardization, stability, and consistency,” said Gregory Kurtzer, CEO of CIQ and Founder of Rocky Linux. “CIQ is bringing stability to our partners, customers, and community, by building a broad coalition of like-minded companies, organizations, and individuals. SUSE has embodied the core principles and spirit of open source; CIQ is thrilled to collaborate with SUSE on advancing an open enterprise Linux standard.”

Red Hat has a long history of playing fast and loose with the GPL and open source principles and has been called out repeatedly for its behavior. The company may have pushed the envelope a little too far this time, and it seems the community and its competitors are rallying against it.

Red Hat drew widespread condemnation when it announced it would begin restricting access to RHEL source code to paying customers. In addition, the customer agreement prohibits customers from sharing and redistributing the source code or from using it to create a downstream distro. The move was seen as a way to target Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, and Oracle Linux, all of which are 1:1 compatible with RHEL and is widely believed to be in violation of the GPL.

Oracle has responded, calling out Red Hat and IBM for not being good open source citizens in a press release entitled, “Keep Linux Open and Free—We Can’t Afford Not To.” After first saying it made its Oracle Linux distro 1:1 compatible with RHEL in an effort to not further fragment the Linux community, the company laid out its case:

While Oracle and IBM have compatible Linux distributions, we have very different ideas about our responsibilities as open source stewards and about operating under the GPLv2. Oracle has always made Oracle Linux binaries and source freely available to all. We do not have subscription agreements that interfere with a subscriber’s rights to redistribute Oracle Linux. On the other hand, IBM subscription agreements specify that you’re in breach if you use those subscription services to exercise your GPLv2 rights. And now, as of June 21, IBM no longer publicly releases RHEL source code.

The blog post references a follow-up Red Hat post in which Mike McGrath, Vice President of Core Platforms Engineering, tried to justify the company’s decision by saying it was about paying Red Hat engineers for the work they do. Oracle then dissects the response, drilling down on the real motivation behind Red Hat and IBM’s decision:

Interesting. IBM doesn’t want to continue publicly releasing RHEL source code because it has to pay its engineers? That seems odd, given that Red Hat as a successful independent open source company chose to publicly release RHEL source and pay its engineers for many years before IBM acquired Red Hat in 2019 for $34 billion.

The blog goes on to mention CentOS. It is no surprise CentOS was top of mind for the author attempting to justify withholding RHEL source. CentOS had been a very popular free RHEL compatible distribution. In December 2020, IBM effectively killed it as a free alternative to RHEL. Two new alternatives to RHEL have sprung up in CentOS’s place: AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux. Now, by withholding RHEL source code, IBM has directly attacked them.

And perhaps that is the real answer to the question of why: eliminate competitors. Fewer competitors means more revenue opportunity for IBM.

Oracle also says it will try its best to maintain 1:1 compatibility with RHEL:

As for Oracle, we will continue pursuing our goal for Linux as transparently and openly as we always have while minimizing fragmentation. We will continue to develop and test our software products on Oracle Linux. Oracle Linux will continue to be RHEL compatible to the extent we can make it so. In the past, Oracle’s access to published RHEL source has been important for maintaining that compatibility. From a practical standpoint, we believe Oracle Linux will remain as compatible as it has always been through release 9.2, but after that, there may be a greater chance for a compatibility issue to arise. If an incompatibility does affect a customer or ISV, Oracle will work to remediate the problem.

Oracle then makes a commitment to never take the approach Red Hat is taking and welcoming downstream distros that want to base on Oracle Linux:

We want to emphasize to Linux developers, Linux customers, and Linux distributors that Oracle is committed to Linux freedom. Oracle makes the following promise: as long as Oracle distributes Linux, Oracle will make the binaries and source code for that distribution publicly and freely available. Furthermore, Oracle welcomes downstream distributions of every kind, community and commercial. We are happy to work with distributors to ease that process, work together on the content of Oracle Linux, and ensure Oracle software products are certified on your distribution.

Oracle’s stand is similar to one made by SUSE, in which that company also emphasized its commitment to open source principles.

Meanwhile, Red Hat has managed to do the seemingly impossible: unify the disparate Linux community and rival companies in condemnation of its actions.

Oracle bet big on health, purchasing medical records giant Cerner for $28 billion last year. According to Business Insider, Oracle Health laid off hundreds of employees Thursday, rescinded existing job offers, and eliminated some open positions.

Insider’s sources say laid-off employees will receive four weeks severance pay, as well as an additional week for every week of employment. Vacation days will also be paid out.

The impetus for the layoffs appears to be issues with Cerner’s contract with the US Department of Veterans Affairs, where unexpected issues have hampered rollout of the company’s platform. The issues were severe enough to trigger a contract renegotiation, one that will hold Cerner more accountable for issues and that led to less work for the company than previously anticipated.

In its latest quarterly results (via CNBC), Oracle reported revenue of $13.84 billion, beating analysts’ expectations of $13.74 billion. Similarly, earnings came in at $1.67 per share, beating expectations of $1.58 per share.

As CNBC points out, Oracle’s results are helping drive the stocks to new highs, with it “up 73% over the past 12 months.” As result, with the exception of Nvidia, Oracle’s stock has outperformed “all large-cap enterprise tech stocks” for the same period. The stock’s current price also makes 2023 the best year for Oracle investors since the dot-com boom.

The company’s current status is surprising to some who had written Oracle off as a bit player in the cloud market and felt the company was losing ground on too many fronts.

Much of the credit is going to founder Larry Ellison, who has helped the company make adjustments and catch up in critical markets.

“Let’s give him credit where it’s finally due,” said Eric Lynch, managing director of Scharf Investments. “The upside case is finally coming through.”

The company’s partnership with AI firm Cohere is also paying off, especially given Cohere’s focus on the enterprise. This makes it an ideal match for Oracle.

Ellison has been saying for years that Oracle had an advantage over its competitors, especially in the realm of integration, stability, and reliability.

“Let me close with a note that I’m going to paraphrase from a very large telecommunications company who uses our cloud and all the other three North American clouds — Google, Amazon and Microsoft,” Ellison said in late 2021. “And the note basically said the one thing we’ve noticed about Oracle, Oracle’s cloud, is that it never ever goes down. We can’t say that about any of the other clouds. We think this is a critical differentiator.”

It appears the industry is finally taking note of what Ellison has been saying all along.