Amid stiff competition in the cloud wars with Amazon and Google, Microsoft today announced a new strategic partnership with long time rival Oracle. The move comes as both Oracle and Microsoft are trying to win over large businesses that want to migrate their computing workloads from in-house data centers to the cloud. The Redmond giant has forged similar alliances with Adobe and ERP software maker SAP in recent years.
The partnership will enable customers to run enterprise workloads across Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud, depending on their needs. They will be able to combine Azure services like Analytics and AI with Oracle Cloud services like Autonomous Database. Additionally, users will be able to log into services from either company with the same credentials and receive support from either of them.
Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Cloud and AI division, said in a statement:
"As the cloud of choice for the enterprise, with over 95% of the Fortune 500 using Azure, we have always been first and foremost focused on helping our customers thrive on their digital transformation journeys. With Oracle’s enterprise expertise, this alliance is a natural choice for us as we help our joint customers accelerate the migration of enterprise applications and databases to the public cloud."
The first direct, high-speed link between the two firms’ data centers is available starting today in the Ashburn and Azure US East regions, with similar interconnects in other regions planned for the future. Today"s announcement did not mention if there will be any transfer fees for customers moving large amounts of data between the two companies" facilities.