Cloud-First Strategies: Oracle’s Vision for Innovation, Security, and the Future of Cloud Databases
CXOTOday has engaged in an exclusive interview with Srikanth Doranadula, Group Vice President – Technology & System, Oracle India
Q1. How do you see agility and innovation in cloud database driving growth for businesses?
Modern businesses are being disrupted by software and digital services powered by the cloud in a massive way, today. Businesses that do not embrace the cloud are unable to keep pace with the evolving needs of their customers in their respective industries, leading to missed opportunities for innovation, agility, and competitiveness. According to a survey conducted by PwC, enterprises can achieve 92% profitability by adopting cloud.
With greater scalability, improved security, and enhanced performance, cloud solutions have become increasingly popular due to their core strengths, including reliability, security, and efficiency. For example, the increased scalability in cloud databases allows businesses to easily adjust resources according to their needs. This flexibility is crucial for handling varying workloads. The built-in security capabilities enhance enterprise network security, which is a key factor driving the demand for cloud databases and Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) solutions, according to Future Market Insights. India is poised to be one of the potential markets in the cloud database and DBaaS market. According to the same report, India is expected to experience a growth rate of 15.4% due to increased digitalization efforts and a favorable business environment.”
Q2. With multiple cloud-based models available in the market, how can an enterprise select the most suitable cloud solution for its business?
While most businesses understand that the cloud is a business imperative, many of them struggle to embark on the right journey due to the challenges they face when selecting the appropriate cloud environment. With the increased pace of innovation, greater agility, more cost savings, and improved competitive advantages, organizations often find compelling reasons to transition to the cloud. However, making the right cloud choice can sometimes be complicated, especially considering their existing IT setups and complex processes that cut across various departments. In such a scenario, opting for a cloud provider that offers a converged platform approach for cloud adoption could benefit organizations in the long run. A high-performance cloud infrastructure foundation can help organizations focus on their core business and accelerate their growth. Modern cloud models, like hybrid and multi-cloud, enable businesses to retain sensitive data on-site while leveraging the scalability and flexibility of public cloud services for other aspects of their applications. The future is heading towards multi-cloud solutions; relying on a single cloud infrastructure provider is neither wise nor practical. Customers seek flexibility and the integration of various cloud providers. At the Oracle Cloud Summit Mumbai 2023, we presented the results of our multi-cloud survey for the Indian market. According to the survey, 98% of Indian enterprises either use or plan to use at least two cloud infrastructure providers, with 33% opting for four or more.
It’s crucial for enterprises to select the best cloud options for their specific workloads, ensuring they are not locked into a single technology. At Oracle, we are committed to making significant investments in product and service innovation to offer customers the diversity and flexibility they need. Hyperscalers like us unify cloud ecosystems to distribute data across various cloud providers. This is the multi-cloud environment, and Oracle is enabling enterprises and vendors to direct their new interest and investment toward deploying seamless, integrated multi-cloud experiences. We’ve been collaborating with Microsoft for several years on Oracle Interconnect for Microsoft Azure, and in 2022, we launched Oracle Database Service for Microsoft Azure – both of which make multicloud solutions simpler and more advantageous for our customers. We also made MySQL HeatWave available on AWS to extend the benefits of HeatWave to a wider range of customers.
Q3. As a cloud leader, how is Oracle strengthening its solution capabilities in an increasingly cloud-first world? Please share details about the latest innovations.
Cloud has also given birth to an entirely new class of companies that are built entirely on innovative uses of data. As a result, business models are redefining industries, and innovations are resetting customer expectations, compelling businesses to become more nimble, responsive, and personalized. Oracle’s next-generation cloud infrastructure offers unique strengths in the cloud, enabling advancements in the use of AI and ML. It autonomously handles the most demanding workloads with unmatched security, performance, and cost savings, making data and the cloud the engine of business agility.
We continue to invest in Database and Analytics services that provide customers options that meet the needs of their business. At Oracle CloudWorld in Las Vegas this year, we demonstrated the unparalleled pace of innovation by making several new announcements spanning Generative AI, Database, Analytics, MySQL and others. We announced new self-service AI capabilities, including generative-AI assistants and augmented analytics help organizations improve how data impacts decision making. This is part of Oracle Analytics Cloud. On the database side, Oracle unveiled its plans to add semantic search capabilities using AI vectors to Oracle Database 23c. The collection of features, called AI Vector Search allows the combination of search on semantic and business data resulting in highly accurate answers quickly and securely. Oracle is developing powerful generative AI services – spanning applications to infrastructure – to help organizations automate end-to-end business processes, improve decision-making, and enhance customer experiences. Oracle announced, new enterprise generative AI service – Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Generative AI service – for organizations to automate business processes, improve decision-making, and enhance customer experiences.
“In addition, Oracle launched significant enhancements to MySQL HeatWave. These enhancements include support for vector store, generative AI, new in-database machine learning features, MySQL Autopilot improvements, new HeatWave Lakehouse capabilities, support for JavaScript, acceleration of JSON queries, and support for new analytic operators. Another innovation introduced by Oracle was the availability of new Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Compute instances powered by NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs, NVIDIA L40S GPUs, and Ampere AmpereOne™ CPUs.”
Q4. In this cloud-first world, how do you see data security being approached by the industry? How does Oracle ensure customers’ data is protected?
At Oracle, our primary focus is enabling our customers to leverage the agility, flexibility, and scalability of the cloud while upholding the utmost security for their data and their customers’ data. With decades of experience in securing data and applications, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure delivers a more secure cloud to our customers, building trust and protecting their most valuable data. We’ve seamlessly integrated security into all our cloud solutions, allowing customers to reduce their risks from advanced persistent threats. Our OCI is a next-generation infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offering based on security-first design principles. As the cloud has become more common, security concerns have grown in importance. From its inception, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure prioritized addressing the security issues that arose from first-generation clouds.
Recently, we have partnered with Applied Invention to establish a universal standard for network and data security. This collaborative effort aims to assist organizations in safeguarding their data within distributed IT environments. Specifically, we are dedicated to establishing an open and universally accepted standard for Zero-Trust Packet Routing (ZPR). This standard is designed to empower organizations to prevent unauthorized access or data misuse without introducing unnecessary obstacles to their activities.
Q5. How do you see the future Cloud database shaping in a few years? What are the major challenges that need to be addressed?
It is anticipated that humans will experience a deeper and interconnected relationship with technology. This will be driven by an increasing number of individuals depending on digital connections for everyday tasks such as work, education, healthcare, and essential social interactions. India’s digital transformation (DX) adoption landscape has been rapidly evolving, with DX spending projected to scale to USD 23.6 billion in 2025 at a CAGR of 17 percent as per IDC.
The rapid adoption of digital technologies by Indian businesses and cloud playing a pivotal role, remains the leading force behind the expansion of the public cloud services market in India. According to IDC, the Indian Public Cloud Services (PCS) market is on the brink of substantial growth, with a projected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.4% from 2022 to 2027.
Customers often express concerns about the limitations of first-generation cloud solutions, including issues related to deployment flexibility, migration complexity, security, regulatory compliance, and interoperability. These challenges have led to a growing trend among Indian organizations to shift away from traditional cloud providers and embrace our next-generation cloud infrastructure.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) offers a comprehensive set of tools and architectural solutions that support enterprises in transitioning from on-premises to cloud environments. This involves enhanced automation and integrated security measures to address and mitigate potential threats, ultimately enabling organizations to achieve more favourable cloud economics. For instance, our customer, Tanishq – one of India’s largest jewellery brands, migrated its inventory management system to OCI, including Oracle Database, Oracle APEX, Oracle Web Application Firewall, and OCI Flexible Load Balancing. With real-time visibility into inventory levels and order fulfilment, Tanishq is able to meet the influx of customer demand and reduce its technology support costs by 30 percent.
