Oracle Database is in many enterprises and now it’s in Google Cloud too

The Oracle database has long been one of the most widely deployed technologies in the enterprise, but that doesn’t mean enterprises have to run it on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

Today Oracle and Google officially announced the general availability of Oracle Database@Google Cloud. The two vendors originally announced that the service was in development back on June 11 with few details, but that changed as of today. The service is initially available in four Google Cloud regions: U.S. East (Ashburn), U.S. West (Salt Lake City), U.K. South (London), and Germany Central (Frankfurt). Plans are already in motion to expand this offering to numerous additional regions across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America in the coming months.

Customers can now deploy Oracle Exadata Database Service, Oracle Autonomous Database, and Oracle Database Zero Data Loss Autonomous Recovery Service directly on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) within Google Cloud data centers. This integration allows organizations to leverage Oracle’s database technology while taking advantage of Google Cloud’s infrastructure and services. The partnership aims to simplify cloud migration processes and accelerate innovation for customers. By combining Oracle’s database expertise with Google Cloud’s advanced AI capabilities, such as Vertex AI and Gemini foundation models, organizations can develop new applications and gain faster insights from their data.

“I think the world’s data actually runs on Oracle databases, you know, we are the world’s most popular enterprise database,” Karan Batta, Senior Vice President of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, told VentureBeat in an exclusive interview. “I think it’s really critical, even though we are a cloud provider that we give access to every single customer that wants access to data in whatever cloud of their choice and so Google is just the next step of that.”

Why Oracle Database@Google Cloud is a big deal

Oracle has been steadily expanding the cloud footprint for its namesake database in recent years. The Google partnership follows a similar arrangement with Microsoft that became generally available on June 20.

Batta noted that while the deal with Microsoft is similar to the new Google deployment, the types of workloads can sometimes differ. With the Google deal, AI is also a key part of the discussion. Customers can build AI applications using Oracle data on Google Cloud. The integration allows customers to leverage Google’s AI services like Vertex and Gemini to build AI applications using Oracle data.

“Customers who come to us are looking for choice and they want to have various technologies they use today available at one place,” Amit Zavery, VP and GM of Platform at Google Cloud told VentureBeat in an exclusive interview. “I think this news is important because it extends that ability.”

Zavery noted that the Oracle database is a choice that many Google customers have already made. As such it’s important for Google to make sure that it’s as easy as possible for those customers to access and use Oracle technologies as part of the Google Cloud experience.

Google Cloud has its fair share of database technology, which was recently updated. The partnership is not currently bi-directional, in a way that enables Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) users to directly access Google Cloud databases. 

Google data analytics and business intelligence users will be happy

In addition to AI enablement, the integration could be a boon to data analytics services on Google Cloud such as Big Query. 

Zavery said that the integration makes it easier for customers who have a significant investment in Oracle databases and applications to also leverage Google BigQuery for their data warehousing and reporting needs. They can now seamlessly access their Oracle data through BigQuery.

“A lot of enterprise applications have Oracle Database at the back end,” Zavery said. “If you have that and now you want to create a web data warehouse or reporting structure, you might have already decided that should be BigQuery or Looker as an analytics platform, we can really allow you to do that through the same console, environment and interface, which you could not do before and now that easily doable.”

How it Oracle Database actually runs in Google Cloud

A key challenge for enabling Oracle Database to run effectively for enterprise use cases in Google Cloud is the issue of latency. After all, if the data isn’t actually in a Google data center there is some latency and potentially a performance hit.

Oracle and Google are addressing that issue head-on.

Batta explained that for the four Google Cloud regions where the service is deployed today, Oracle is expanding the physical infrastructure of OCI into the Google data center. That’s a different approach than just having an optimized interconnect between two different data centers.

“Really, where we’re going from the interconnect, which is a long wire, to a short wire, because essentially, our infrastructure lives inside a Google data center to some extent,” Batta said.