Microsoft and Oracle have been competitors for more than three decades.
That rivalry was best expressed in the differences between the founders of the two companies; the studious, nerdy Microsoft CEO Bill Gates and Oracle’s brash larger-than-life CEO Larry Ellison.
Their rivalry, rooted in a battle for database supremacy, has seen Oracle desiring fewer, larger servers, trying to shatter Microsoft’s perceived monopoly in computing and focus on Microsoft’s database SQLServer in the late 1990s.
Yet, in a surprising turn of events, Larry Ellison made his first trip up to Redmond, WA to publically meet with current Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
The meeting marked a significant milestone as the two companies announced a very public expansion to what had previously been a quiet partnership.
This collaboration aims to fast-track the migration of clients to the cloud, with Microsoft Azure set to be the secondary cloud provider equipped to handle Oracle’s database services.
The new offering, Oracle Database@Azure, combines Oracle’s databases with Azure’s industry-leading cloud computing platform.
The combined offering makes it easier for Oracle adherents to take applications using Oracle’s databases to the cloud.
The odd pairing can be categorized as “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” as both companies compete with other large cloud computing players such as Amazon and Google.
Microsoft’s Nadella offered, “Our expanded partnership with Oracle will make Microsoft Azure the only other cloud provider to run Oracle’s database services and help our customers unlock a new wave of cloud-powered innovation.”
While Ellison said, “By collocating Oracle Exadata hardware in Azure data centers, customers will experience the best possible database and network performance.”
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