M+E Connections

Oracle is gearing up to deliver additional autonomous cloud services to its customers soon, according to Larry Ellison, the company’s founder, chairman and CTO.

“Over the next few months, we expect to deliver autonomous analytics, autonomous mobility, autonomous application development and autonomous integration services,” he said March 19 on an earnings call for Oracle’s third quarter (ended Feb. 28).

Oracle’s “fully autonomous, self-driving database is now available” in the Oracle Cloud, he noted, boasting: “No other cloud provider has a fully automated database — one that automatically and immediately applies security and patches without requiring any scheduled downtime.”

On the company’s second-quarter earnings call, Ellison said Oracle would be launching its artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning-based Autonomous Database in January. At the time, he told analysts the company expected the new technology to “dramatically accelerate the growth” of its Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) businesses and keep its database license business strong also.

He noted that the new and enhanced version of the Oracle database was “totally automated, a self-driving system that does not require human beings to either manage or tune the database,” and uses AI “to eliminate most sources of human error.”

Autonomous Database will be “an enormous driver for customers to actually move their important workloads to the cloud,” Oracle CEO Safra Catz predicted on that same call.

Oracle’s new suite of autonomous PaaS services “delivers an unprecedented level of automation and cost savings to our customers,” Ellison said on the Q3 call March 19, adding the “highly automated suite of autonomous PaaS services reduces cost by reducing human labor and improves reliability and security by reducing human error.”

CEO Mark Hurd, on the March 19 call, pointed to another area of opportunity for Oracle, saying: “Less than 15% of our apps customers have started to move their core apps to the cloud. Between customers that are partially moved and those not started yet, we have an enormous opportunity.”

Oracle reported Q3 revenue grew 6% from a year ago, to $9.8 billion. Cloud and On-Premise Software Revenues were up 8% to $8.0 billion. Cloud SaaS revenue soared 33% to $1.2 billion, while cloud PaaS plus Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) revenue jumped 28% to $415 million. Total cloud revenues increased 32% to $1.6 billion. But the company swung to a $4 billion loss (-98 cents a share) from a $2.2 billion profit (53 cents a share) a year ago.

Although Oracle’s cloud growth continued to slow somewhat, MUFG Securities Americas analyst Stephen Bersey said in a research note: “We think the company had a solid quarter, and we were pleased to learn Oracle believes they are still taking share in the cloud “Once again, the pipeline is at a record level as the shift to the cloud continues,” he said, adding: “Our primary takeaway from the quarterly results is that the growth story is intact” at the company.

Bersey went on to say: “The company’s performance in PaaS & IaaS was the primary driver behind the quarterly beat, which we think shows the strength of Oracle’s vertically-integrated sales approach, as well as strong early momentum from Autonomous Database.”