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Oracle’s Ellison: Company to Tout New, Machine Learning-Based Database

Oracle is preparing to unveil its next-generation, machine learning-based cloud database at its annual OpenWorld conference Oct. 1 in San Francisco, the company reported Sept. 14.

The announcement came during results for its first quarter (ended Aug. 31), which were driven by strong demand for its cloud products, according to company executives.

Oracle will deliver that new version of its database by the end of this calendar year, at which time it will be able to offer “the world’s first fully autonomous database,” Larry Ellison, the company’s founder, chairman and CTO, told analysts in a conference call Sept. 14. The new version is a “totally automated self-driving system that does not require a human being either to manage the database or tune the database,” he said.

He added: “Using artificial intelligence to eliminate most sources of human error enables Oracle to deliver unprecedented reliability in the cloud.”

Oracle will offer public Cloud service level agreements (SLAs) for the database that “guarantee 99.995 percent systems’ availability time,” meaning there will be 
“less than 30 minutes of planned or unplanned downtime per year,” he said, adding: “To achieve that level of reliability, Oracle has to automatically tune, patch and upgrade itself, while the system is running.”

What could be the “most interesting aspect of autonomous systems like self-driving cars on our new self- driving database are the economics that surround total automation,” he said, noting that self-driving cars “eliminate the labor cost of driving, plus the high cost associated with human driving errors.” A self-driving database “eliminates the labor cost of tuning, managing and upgrading the database plus avoiding all of the costly downtime associated with human error,” he said. While self-driving taxis are “much cheaper to operate than taxis with human drivers,” running Oracle’s autonomous database is “much, much cheaper than running traditional human driven databases,” he told analysts.

He went on to say later on the call that Oracle was “using machine learning all over the place,” including to improve its human resources and recruitment systems when considering job candidates, as well as for its security systems. Of the latter, he pointed out that Oracle can study its database logs to see who is trying to log into its application systems and what passwords they’re using. Oracle processes all those logs in its cloud to, for example, find users who may try to attack a database and steal passwords and data, he said. “We think we do this better than anybody because we look at more data,” he told analysts.

Taking such security steps has become more important than ever, he said, calling the recent data breach at consumer credit reporting agency Equifax “very unfortunate.” But he predicted that’s “not going to be an isolated incident” and “you’re going to see more and more things like this.” He added: “We’ve got to do a better job of securing not only our cloud, but our customers’ data centers.” To achieve that, it’s important for companies using artificial intelligence to help companies hire the right people and help private and public data centers protect against intrusions. This new technology is “the center of what we’re doing with database automation, security and our applications,” he said.


Oracle reported total first-quarter revenue grew 7% from a year ago, to $9.2 billion, while profit increased 21% to $2.2 billion and operating profit grew 7% to $2.8 billion. Cloud plus on-premise software revenue grew 9% to $7.4 billion, while cloud Software as a Service (SaaS) revenue soared 62% to $1.1 billion, cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) plus Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) revenue increased 28% to $400 million. Total cloud revenue jumped 51% to $1.5 billion.

“Customer adoption of our cloud products and services continue to be very, very strong and our on-premise business remains very resilient,” CEO Safra Catz said on the earnings call. With cloud now a “larger and more predictable share of the revenue mix, I expect that we will see additional strong operating income growth” at the company, she said.

Oracle “had a solid quarter as it continues its transition to the cloud,” MUFG Securities Americas analyst Stephen Bersey said in a research note. The company’s “sustained 50+% year-over-year (YoY) cloud revenue growth rates have persisted even as cloud revenues passed” $1 billion last fiscal year, he said, adding Oracle also “still has significant opportunities in the next several years” in its SaaS, PaaS and IaaS businesses.