Welcome to the Cloud Wars Minute — your daily cloud news and commentary show. Each episode provides insights and perspectives around the “reimagination machine” that is the cloud.
The AI Ecosystem Q1 2024 Report compiles the innovations, funding, and products highlighted in AI Ecosystem Reports from the first quarter of 2024. Download now for perspectives on the companies, investments, innovations, and solutions shaping the future of AI.
In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I talk about Oracle’s impressive Q4 growth, its plans to expand data center capacity, and Larry Ellison’s ambitious vision for AI-powered infrastructure.
Highlights
00:01 — You always have to be prepared for Larry Ellison to say some quite unexpected things on earnings calls. One that really got my attention last week was, “We are working toward a future where every one of Oracle’s customers could, if it wanted to, have its own Oracle Cloud data center inside that customer’s data center.”
01:15 — Larry Ellison is not constrained by what has come before or what might be possible. Behind this, Ellison says, is the design of its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). It can do everything from the largest “AI data centers” to the very tiny. He said, “Heck, we’re even going to be able to put these little Oracle Cloud data centers in ships and submarines.”
02:04 — He said, “It is conceivable that every Oracle customer could have a total Oracle Cloud region for itself with full services of everything Oracle Cloud offers by virtue of having an Oracle Cloud data center within that customer’s data center.” This is quite a striking feat of imagination.
03:00 — In Q4, Ellison said Oracle signed over 30 AI contracts. He said there’s going to be lots more. On the other end of the spectrum, Oracle is scaling up. He said there’s a data center that they’re about to bring online where “We could park eight 747s nose to tail in this.”
Ask Cloud Wars AI Agent about this analysis
03:57 — As in the worlds of astronomy and physics, Oracle is playing in the very small nature of things, down at the submolecular level up to the very large, out in the cosmos. It is a radically different approach than what the other hyperscalers are taking so far.
04:40 — Ellison is effectively saying there’s a need to shake things up; let’s not be constrained by what’s happened in the cloud in the past, but instead, open up our imaginations to what could be possible and should be possible based on a new set of market requirements here in the early days of the AI revolution.
