Article originally posted on InfoQ. Visit InfoQ

Recently, Microsoft and Oracle announced the general availability (GA) of Oracle Database Service for Microsoft Azure, a new service that allows Microsoft Azure customers to provision, access, and monitor enterprise-grade Oracle Database services in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

Microsoft and Oracle have partnered since 2019 and first delivered the Oracle Interconnect for Microsoft Azure,, allowing hundreds of organizations to use secure and private interconnections in 11 global regions. Now both companies have extended their partnership with the GA release of Oracle Database Service for Microsoft Azure, which builds upon the core capabilities of the Oracle Interconnect for Azure and enables any customer to integrate workloads more easily on Microsoft Azure with Oracle Database services on OCI.

Through the Azure Portal, customers can deploy Oracle Database running on OCI with the Oracle Database Service. The service automatically configures everything required to link the two cloud environments and federates Azure Active Directory identities, making it easy for Azure customers to use the service. Furthermore, OCI database logs and metrics are integrated with Azure Services such as Azure Application Insights and Azure Log Analytics for simpler management and monitoring Azure Application Insights and Azure Log Analytics.

Source: https://www.oracle.com/cloud/azure/

Jane Zhu, senior vice president, and chief information officer, Corporate Operations, Veritas, said in a Microsoft press release:

Oracle Database Service for Microsoft Azure has simplified the use of a multi-cloud environment for data analytics. We were able to easily ingest large volumes of data hosted by Oracle Exadata Database Service on OCI to Azure Data Factory where we are using Azure Synapse for analysis. 

In addition, Holger Mueller, principal analyst and vice president at Constellation Research Inc., told InfoQ:

It is remarkable as customers brought competitors together – and now Oracle is even better integrated into the Azure… practically making Oracle a first-grade citizen in Azure – operating the Oracle DB from an Azure console. This is how multi-cloud should be implemented – so customers win. And they must win……

Furthermore, he said: 

Tacitly it is also the admission by Microsoft that the Oracle DB is better than MS SQL Server and by Oracle that Microsoft PowerBI is better than Oracle Analytics – at least for some customers… and Larry J Ellison is right – it is all about giving customers choices.

Lastly, there are no charges for using the Oracle Database Service for Microsoft Azure, the Oracle Interconnect for Microsoft Azure, or data egress or ingress when moving data between OCI and Azure. Customers will pay only for the other Azure or Oracle services they consume, such as Azure Synapse or Oracle Autonomous Database.