Microsoft adds additional Oracle Database services to Azure: an expansion of the joint offering launched at the end of 2023.
Microsoft and Oracle have been friends for a while. The friendship was formalized at the end of 2023 with the birth of Oracle Database @ Azure, a service where Oracle database servers run in Microsoft’s cloud. Microsoft announces a further expansion of this offering with Oracle Database Enterprise Edition and Standard Edition servers.
Both cloud giants are also strengthening their ties with the further development of Oracle Database Service for Azure. Through this service, you can manage workloads running on Oracle infrastructure via the Azure dashboard. The service includes the Oracle Exadata Database Service on Exascale Infrastructure via the Azure Marketplace through a custom private offer or a pay-as-you-go model. Microsoft is also introducing a Bring Your Own License formula for Oracle customers.
Expensive Affair
Experts warn, however, that running and managing Oracle databases from Azure infrastructure can be a costly affair. Understanding Oracle licenses already requires higher mathematics, but the cloud provider would charge significantly when customers come from Azure. Oracle counts two vCPUs as equivalent to one license.
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“With Exascale infrastructure, organizations only pay for the compute and storage resources used, starting with a low, very affordable minimum size and within Azure’s familiar cloud ecosystem,” Microsoft says in a statement to The Register.
Great Love, But Not Exclusive
The friendship between Oracle and Microsoft goes back several years now, although it’s no longer exclusive. While Microsoft was the first competitor-colleague with whom Oracle entered into a deep integration, it launched Oracle Database @ Google Cloud last summer and later Oracle Database @ AWS. Oracle has been increasingly positioning itself as a multi-cloud player in recent years.