Oracle bets big on gen AI at CloudWorld 2023

Cloud major Oracle has announced the addition of generative artificial intelligence (AI)-powered capabilities within its Fusion Cloud Customer Experience (CX), as it bets big on AI-driven Cloud solutions across its portfolio. This will help businesses grow revenue and deliver exceptional customer experience, the company said during the Oracle CloudWorld 2023 being held in Las Vegas from 18-21 September. 

The new generative AI service, which is built and supported on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) in combination with large language models (LLMs) from Cohere, is a managed service that will allow enterprises to integrate LLM-based generative AI interfaces in their applications via an API, according to the company. OCI hosts both prebuilt and custom models. 

In July, Oracle announced its three-tier generative AI strategy across multiple product offerings that include its OCI Supercluster, partnership with Cohere, and addition of generative AI assistants to its SaaS offerings. The strategy was to take on rival cloud service providers — Amazon Web Services (AWS), IBM, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. 

“The new capabilities in Oracle Cloud CX will help organizations resolve customer service issues quicker and more efficiently by increasing service agent and field technician productivity, optimizing self-service, and automating traditional tasks that are manual and time-consuming,” said Rob Tarkoff, executive vice president and general manager, Oracle Cloud CX, at the flagship event. 

The embedded generative AI capabilities within Oracle Cloud CX are designed to respect customers’ enterprise data, privacy, and security, Tarkoff added. 

Earlier this week, Oracle also showcased new AI capabilities in its next-generation EHR platform focused on improving patient and provider experiences with easy-to-use, consumer-grade applications. The new Oracle Health EHR platform will provide convenient self-service options that empower patients while reducing provider burden and administrative workloads, the company informed. 

The recent announcements reaffirm the company’s focus on AI-driven Cloud solutions across its portfolio. Larry Ellison, executive chairman, and chief technology officer at Oracle's keynote focused on the new era of AI. He said that generative AI has been an opportunity for his company. 

“Generative AI is a revolution,” Ellison said during his keynote address at the event. “It is a breakthrough. It’s transformational. It’s fundamentally changing things at Oracle. … This makes AI central to almost everything we’re doing.” 

The use of generative AI has helped the software and its cloud services firm cut down on the writing of code and auto-generating it instead. Oracle is also making all new databases autonomous such that they install, configure and update themselves. 

There have been other changes too in the organisation. Ellison made his first-ever visit to rival Microsoft’s headquarters to announce a collaboration with Microsoft Azure just days before CloudWorld. The partnership allows Oracle to offer customers both its hardware and software housed on Microsoft’s Azure databases. 

Oracle crossed the $50 billion revenue line in its last fiscal year after its cloud revenue climbed 54% Q4 ended May 2023, while its revenue growth dipped to 30% in the latest quarter.  

Until recently, companies have signed contracts to buy more than $4 billion of AI training capacity in Oracle’s Generation 2 cloud. That’s twice as much AI training as we had booked at the end of the last Q4,” Ellison said during an earnings call with analysts on 12 September. 

He said it expects cloud revenue to grow 29% to 31% in the second quarter of 2024, even as the overall business grows in single digits.