Oracle's Ellison Targets Amazon With New Database Technology

Brian Womack (Bloomberg) -- Oracle Corp.’s Larry Ellison said new features in its database service will help the software company go after Amazon.com Inc. in its expanding cloud-computing business.

During his big annual keynote in San Francisco Sunday, the executive chairman said the new database has been overhauled with artificial intelligence, improving on speed, efficiency and pricing to help it outperform Amazon. To make his point, he showed head-to-head tests on stage, including real-time examples, during the Oracle OpenWorld event. He ended his talk by pointing out the rival’s use of his own database.

“They are one of the biggest users on the planet earth,” Ellison said.

Oracle, based in Redwood City, California, is locked in an increasingly aggressive battle with Amazon over cloud products, an area the e-commerce company helped pioneer. Customers around the world are adopting the new type of service that lets them easily access computing power and software without having to build and install the technology on their own sites.

For Oracle, sales tied to the new cloud technologies rose more than 50 percent in the previous fiscal quarter — and made up 16 percent of overall revenue in the period, the company said last month. Ellison said the new database’s use of machine learning is a big step for the industry, adding the ability to automate tasks and improvements to security.

“This is a dramatic and revolutionary new technology,” Ellison said. “There aren’t that many revolutionary new technologies but this one is.”