CDSA

Oracle used its OpenWorld conference that kicked off in San Francisco Oct. 1 to introduce the industry’s first autonomous database cloud, as well as expanded artificial intelligence (AI) offerings and an Oracle Blockchain Cloud Service.

Oracle Autonomous Database Cloud is powered by the latest generation of Oracle’s database, Database 18c, and “uses ground-breaking machine learning to enable automation that eliminates human labor, human error and manual tuning, to enable unprecedented availability, high performance and security at a much lower cost,” the company said in a news release Oct. 2.

The Oracle Autonomous Database Cloud “eliminates the human labor associated with tuning, patching, updating and maintaining” the database and includes capabilities that include self-driving functionality, providing continuous adaptive performance tuning based on machine learning, automatically upgrading and patching itself while running, and automatically applying security updates while running to protect against cyberattacks.

“The database, after it’s been notified by the security system to remediate” a problem “has to be able to patch itself immediately while running,” Larry Ellison, Oracle CTO and chairman, said Oct. 1 in an OpenWorld keynote that was webcast. He stressed the importance of the autonomous database and automated cybersecurity being able to work together. Details on Oracle’s new cybersecurity technology were to be disclosed Oct. 3 at OpenWorld, he said.

Other capabilities of the Oracle Autonomous Database Cloud include self-scaling functionality that instantly resizes compute and storage without downtime, with cost savings multiplied because Oracle Autonomous Database Cloud consumes less compute and storage than Amazon, with lower manual administration costs; and self-repairing functionality that provides automated protection from downtime, Oracle said.

The Oracle Autonomous Database Cloud handles many different workload styles, including transactions, mixed workloads, data warehouses, graph analytics, departmental applications, document stores and Internet of Things (IoT), Oracle said. The first Autonomous Database Cloud offering, for data warehouse workloads, is planned before the end of 2017, Oracle said.

Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse Cloud is a next-generation cloud service that’s built on the self-driving Oracle Autonomous Database technology using machine learning to “deliver unprecedented performance, reliability and ease of deployment for data warehouses,” the company said.

As an autonomous cloud service, it will eliminate “error-prone manual management tasks and frees up DBA resources, which can now be applied to implementing more strategic business projects,” it said. Highlights of the Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse Cloud include simplicity, enhanced performance and instant elasticity, it said. Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse Cloud is a simple “load and go” service, “unlike traditional cloud services with complex, manual configurations that require a database expert to specify data distribution keys and sort keys, build indexes, reorganize data or adjust compression,” it said.

As part of its expanded AI offerings, the company also introduced Oracle AI Platform Cloud Service that it said in a separate news release was designed “to help developers quickly create and deploy breakthrough enterprise AI services.” Using the new AI cloud service, companies can take advantage of deep learning to better understand enterprise data and “transform corporate business processes and user experiences,” it said.

Oracle also announced new Adaptive Intelligent Apps that it said “enable business users from across the organization to quickly and easily take advantage of the industry’s most powerful AI-based modern business applications.” By embedding AI capabilities directly within existing Oracle Cloud Applications – including Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning Cloud, Oracle Human Capital Management Cloud, Oracle Supply Chain Management Cloud and the Oracle Customer Experience Cloud Suite – Oracle said it “eliminates the need for more integrations or other costly and time-consuming processes.”

Adaptive Intelligent Apps are powered by insights from the Oracle Data Cloud, which it said is the largest third-party data marketplace in the world with a collection of more than 5 billion global consumer and business IDs and more than 7.5 trillion data points collected monthly. By applying advanced data science and machine learning to Oracle’s web-scale data and company’s own data, the new apps “can react, learn and adapt in real time based on historical and dynamic customer data,” Oracle said.

In addition to Oracle AI Platform Cloud Service, Oracle noted that it also embeds ready-to-use AI and machine learning capabilities across its Software as a Service, Platform as a Service and IoT services, including cognitive AI, analytics, data services, IT management and security operations. Other new AI-based solutions and services being unveiled or showcased at OpenWorld this week include conversational AI through bots in Oracle Mobile Cloud that it said “automate human interactions using natural language, sentiment, speech, images, and machine learning.”

Oracle Blockchain Cloud Service, meanwhile, is an “advanced, enterprise-grade distributed ledger cloud platform” that the company said in another news release “helps customers increase business velocity, create new revenue streams, and reduce cost and risk.”