Oracle goes all-in on AI, customers still figuring out how they'll use it

It's all agents and LLMs in Vegas, and even legacy users can partake

As Oracle pounds the market with AI announcements across cloud infrastructure, applications, and data analytics, experts have warned that users' path to adoption remains uncertain.

Founded in 1977, Oracle built its dominance in enterprise tech from a foundation of databases and then applications through a series of acquisitions. But those attending the company's AI World in Las Vegas this week might note this is no longer the main focus, said Balaji Abbabatulla, Gartner vice president and analyst.

"There's a tagline that says AI changes everything, and that definitely holds true for Oracle," he said. "They're definitely going all in for AI. Everything at the conference, everything in the keynotes, is all about AI."

Among the broad gamut of announcements – on which Big Red declined to brief The Register – are AI additions to Fusion, Oracle's cloud application portfolio, which includes ERP, finance, HR, and payroll.

For example, Oracle is expanding its AI Agent Studio for Fusion, which promises to help developers build, test, and deploy AI agents by extending LLM support to third-party providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, Google, Meta, and xAI. It has also announced an agent marketplace for Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications customers to shop for AI agents built by third-party partners including Alithya, Apex IT, Grant Thornton, Huron, IBM Consulting, Infosys, Wipro, Accenture, Deloitte, KPMG, and PwC.

Yet any users thinking they can just pick an AI agent off the shelf and deploy need to do some homework.

"Oracle would like us to think that there's not much work there, but when you look at data quality and the maturity of data management across customer segments, that essentially defines who can get business value out of AI agents as a technology component," said Abbabatulla.

"Ultimately, it is that last mile of inferencing or reasoning which really converts the trained AI to an AI that can deliver meaningful, relevant decisions that you can act on. That's the last mile. It's not the case that every customer is going to be able to do it straight away. Those who have good data management practices, data governance, and have got reasonably good levels of data quality, they should be able to get to the business value journey quicker than others."

Kevin Dattolico, Americas regional CEO for Syntax, a provider of Oracle professional and managed services, said customers were also struggling to know where to start.

"A lot of customers are slightly overwhelmed," he said. "They've started to go and try to figure out their AI strategy and what they're quickly realizing is that they need a data and data governance strategy in order for it to all make sense. They step back and say, 'Where is our data housed? And what are we going to do?'"

To this end, Oracle deserved praise for allowing users to bring its database to be housed with hyperscaler datacenters on its OCI hardware, the so-called "database@" offering available for Google Cloud, Azure, and AWS. Dattolico said over the last few years, Oracle had become the open partner.

"They've partnered with all the different LLM providers, and that openness is not only for an Oracle solution, but also the rest of the data repositories that are out there. Then also they're partnering and tying into the different hyperscalers as well. Customers who have started to go down a path developing these new applications [in a cloud provider] now they want to be able to bring the data closer to those applications. Oracle have put OCI, in essence, to run within the same confines as AWS, Azure and GCP, which then allows the value of the OCI platform to be realized within those hyperscalers. Typically, customers would have to go through a significant cost migration [to do that]."

Dattolico said that openness contributes to reducing cost, and increases agility and flexibility. "In today's world, that's some of the most important things. In the change in dynamic – from political, economical, and everything else – our customers struggle with being agile enough to adapt."

Patrick Pugh, PwC's global alliance leader, said customers were looking for orchestration to bring technology from a range of vendors across the technology stack.

"Most clients are going multi-tech across their platform. The key is, how do all of these tech companies set up an environment and a structure where agents and people can work across the platform in seamless manners? It's highly competitive, but the tech players, including Oracle, have realized that we live in a multi-tech environment, so you can see the architectures, the intentions and their collaboration doing some doing work that's best for the customers."

One way Oracle has diverged from the market for application vendors is to bring AI agents to legacy systems. While rivals Workday and Salesforce were born in the cloud, SAP has said that innovations such as its Joule agent system will only be available on its latest software – S/4HANA – in the cloud, with a large chunk of customers still using its legacy platform, ECC. Oracle has said users of its legacy E-Business Suite (EBS) can take advantage of AI agents.

Gartner's Abbabatulla said EBS and PeopleSoft – the widely used HR and financial system Oracle acquired in 2005 – could connect with the LLM agent platform via OCI.

"You can do all that stuff. There's also the studio which I can use to build agents on top. It just means the users have got additional bits on top of the technology and the tooling layer that's built on OCI. However customers will be limited by the age of the application," he said. "That doesn't change."

Oracle has also offered longer support deadlines than its rivals. EBS and PeopleSoft are supported until 2036, whereas SAP ends mainstream support for ECC in 2027, with extended support ending in 2030.

"Oracle's approach is really more the carrot approach than the stick, to say that these are good things you can get from AI," he said. "They've got tools that would help customers to migrate in a manner that makes sense for them, by taking certain data and functions in a phased manner, instead of dumping everything onto SaaS in one go." ®