Oracle Pushes AI Database@Azure Into JAPAC With New Partner Push

Oracle is running a customer-focused webinar on Oracle AI Database@Azure aimed at JAPAC enterprises running Oracle workloads inside Microsoft Azure data centers. The session walks through the 33-region Oracle AI Database@Azure footprint, a partner program that resells the service through Microsoft Marketplace, and the AI features in Oracle AI Database 26ai. It is the public-facing surface of a multicloud push that pulled the Oracle-Microsoft partnership out of its 2019 interconnect roots and into the colocation era, with Oracle database services now physically running inside Microsoft data centers.

The wager: customers who want to mix hyperscalers can keep their transactional core in Oracle without giving up the Azure-side AI and analytics stack they already use. For Asian buyers weighing a cloud move in 2026, the message is that the two clouds now live in the same building. Oracle’s framing leans on a single architectural idea: the database sits next to the Azure services that read and write to it, so latency falls and governance stays in one identity layer. The pitch is the lever behind the partner program and the multicloud universal credits, aimed at JAPAC enterprises that still run Oracle alongside Microsoft tooling. The session also walks through how Oracle frames OCI and Azure, with each layer carrying its own workload.

The Multicloud Pitch for JAPAC

The webinar, titled “Migrate, Modernize, and Innovate with Oracle AI Database@Azure” and published by GovInsider as the customer-focused Oracle AI Database@Azure webinar, frames Oracle’s multicloud architecture for a JAPAC audience already running mixed environments. Sessions cover deployment through Azure consoles, procurement via the Microsoft Marketplace, integrated billing, BYOL options, and the Oracle Support Rewards program. Common customer use cases on the agenda include moving from infrastructure-as-a-service to managed database services, reuniting applications and databases in the cloud, cloudifying on-premises workloads, and using enterprise data to power AI initiatives. The agenda also pulls in market-specific hooks, including cloud-at-customer options for regulated industries.

The JAPAC regional availability is the central plank. The session walks through which Azure regions carry Oracle AI Database@Azure and how customers can manage their workloads through hyperscaler consoles they already use. A key technical focus is how Oracle AI Database 26ai enables AI closer to enterprise data, reducing latency and avoiding unnecessary data replication while supporting semantic search across structured and unstructured data.

The webinar also introduces open standards and lakehouse integration patterns, showing how Oracle Autonomous AI Lakehouse can work with hyperscaler AI/ML services and analytics platforms. The technical pitch around 26ai centers on running AI next to the data, not after a copy step. That matters for JAPAC enterprises bound by cross-border data movement rules, where avoiding data replication is a compliance win. Oracle Support Rewards, which lets customers apply existing Oracle license investments toward Azure-side consumption, is the procurement hook for that audience. The implicit target is enterprises that have standardized on Azure for app development while keeping Oracle for the transactional core.

From 14 Regions to 33 in a Single Year

Oracle expanded Oracle Database@Azure global coverage from 14 to 33 regions over 2025, per a year-in-review blog by Muneer Mirza, Oracle’s vice president of product for multicloud. The Oct. 14, 2025 announcement listed 28 live regions, with five more planned within 12 months. By year-end, the expansion had reached all 33 Azure regions, according to a Microsoft Tech Community post on the new dedicated Autonomous AI Database option. For JAPAC, the regions already live include Japan East, Japan West, Central India, South India, and Southeast Asia, per Microsoft’s region-availability documentation.

The five regions planned in the 12 months from the Oct. 14 announcement were Brazil Southeast, France South, North Central US, South India, and West Europe. The colocation design is what makes that footprint work, with the database and Azure services sharing a data center. Per Microsoft’s technical documentation for Oracle AI Database@Azure, the service runs on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure inside Microsoft Azure data centers, with Azure Virtual Network for networking, Microsoft Entra ID for federated identity, and Azure Monitor for metrics and audit logs, while an OCI tenancy is still required for some management tasks including provisioning of Oracle Container Databases and Pluggable Databases.

The Partner Program and Universal Credits

Behind the regional map is a distribution bet. The same Oct. 14, 2025 announcement opened a partner program that lets Microsoft and Oracle partners purchase Oracle Database@Azure through Microsoft Marketplace via a private offer, resell it to customers, and integrate it into their solutions.

Eligibility requires membership in both the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner program and the Oracle PartnerNetwork. The same press release also introduced Oracle Multicloud Universal Credits, which lets customers procure Oracle AI Database and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services with credits usable across Oracle Database@AWS, Oracle Database@Azure, Oracle Database@Google Cloud, and OCI. The deal structure matters because customers who had treated hyperscalers as separate wallets can now consolidate Oracle spend across them. Andy Tay, global lead of Accenture Cloud First, framed the move in the press release:

As strategic partners for both Oracle and Microsoft, leading some of their largest client transformations, this partner-first approach will further enhance how we support the cloud migration and multicloud and AI needs of our clients.

Andy Tay, global lead, Accenture Cloud First, in the Oct. 14, 2025 Oracle press release

Infosys executive vice president and chief delivery officer Dinesh Rao said the company will combine its cloud and AI expertise with the embedded AI vector capabilities of Oracle AI Database and Microsoft Azure’s AI services. The program also opens a door for smaller regional partners in JAPAC to bundle Oracle AI Database@Azure with their own Azure migration offerings. Microsoft and Oracle partners can now buy the service through Microsoft Marketplace via a private offer, with the billing counted toward the customer’s Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment. Existing Oracle AI Database software customers can use the Bring Your Own License option or Unlimited License Agreements. The bet now sits with the long tail of regional system integrators across JAPAC who already sell both stacks.

What 26ai Brings to AI Workloads

Oracle AI Database 26ai is the long-term support release that replaces Oracle Database 23ai, per Oracle’s announcement introducing AI Database 26ai. Customers can apply the October 2025 release update to move from 23ai to the currently available features of 26ai with no database upgrade and no application re-certification, and advanced AI features including AI Vector Search are included at no additional charge.

The features that matter most for an AI-heavy workload: Unified Hybrid Vector Search combines AI Vector Search with relational, text, JSON, knowledge graph, and spatial searches, letting customers retrieve documents, images, videos, audio, and structured data in a single query. Select AI Agent provides an in-database framework for building, deploying, and managing AI agents that can use pre-built and custom tools, including MCP servers, to automate multi-step agentic workflows. MCP Server Support lets AI agents powered by large language models access an organization’s database to answer questions using iterative reasoning. AI Private Agent Factory offers a no-code builder for those agents, deployable as a container inside any customer environment. Oracle Exadata for AI accelerates vector queries by offloading them to Exadata intelligent storage, with Remote Direct Memory Access algorithms for ultra low-latency data access across nodes.

Oracle AI Database 26ai also implements NIST-approved ML-KEM algorithms to encrypt data-in-flight, joining existing quantum-resistant encryption for data-at-rest. The release adds built-in data privacy protection, with end-user-specific row, column, and cell-level data visibility and dynamic masking of unauthorized data. Holger Mueller, vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research, said in the same press release:

Great AI needs great data. With Oracle AI Database 26ai, customers get both.

Holger Mueller, vice president and principal analyst, Constellation Research, in the Oct. 14, 2025 Oracle press release

On top of the database release, Oracle Autonomous AI Lakehouse is now generally available on all four major hyperscalers (OCI, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud) and is interoperable with Databricks and Snowflake on the same clouds. Autonomous AI Lakehouse combines Oracle Autonomous AI Database with the Apache Iceberg open table format, enabling customers to apply AI models to data wherever it resides. That four-cloud footprint is the technical centerpiece of the webinar.

Four Customers Already on the Stack

Activision Blizzard, the Microsoft-owned game publisher, is one of the named adopters of Oracle Database@Azure. Mahesh Tyagi, vice president of finance engineering at Activision Blizzard, framed the choice in the same Oracle press release on Database@Azure expansion:

Oracle Database@Azure delivers the high performance of Oracle Exadata natively within Azure, empowering us to move our Oracle workloads to the cloud without compromise.

Mahesh Tyagi, vice president of finance engineering, Activision Blizzard, in the Oct. 14, 2025 Oracle press release

Other named customers from the year-in-review blog for Oracle Database@Azure tell the same story at different scales. Conduent has nearly doubled its footprint on Oracle Database@Azure since January 2025, expanding from its U.S. tolling application into Pharmacy and Benefits applications. Liantis migrated disaster recovery from Oracle Database on Azure memory-optimized virtual machines to Oracle Exadata Database Service on Oracle Database@Azure. SEFE, halfway through migrating 17 applications and 37 environments, was already seeing performance improvements of an average of 10%. The JAPAC counterparts have not been named publicly, but the same Exadata-on-Azure template is the one the webinar is built around.

How the Bet Is Tracking

The bet is paying off, at least by Oracle’s own measure. Muneer Mirza’s year-in-review blog cites Oracle CEO Clay Magouyrk ahead of the December 10 earnings call saying the multicloud database business is Oracle’s fastest growing business, up 817% in Q2. The denominator is small, since multicloud database was a new line item, but the 817% figure is the only quarterly data point Oracle has shared so far. Customers like Activision Blizzard, Conduent, Liantis, and SEFE are the named proof points in the year-in-review.

The contest sits with the analytics-native data clouds. Snowflake and Databricks both have Oracle database integration connectors and have been pushing their own lakehouse offerings.

Oracle’s counter is that Autonomous AI Lakehouse supports the Apache Iceberg open table format on all four major hyperscalers and is interoperable with Databricks and Snowflake on the same clouds. Oracle’s posture is coexistence: keep Snowflake and Databricks in place, move the transactional core of the business to Oracle AI Database@Azure. For JAPAC enterprises already weighing the move, the Activision Blizzard path of Exadata-native Oracle workloads running inside the Azure data center, with Azure-side AI services on top, is the early template for what adoption looks like.

• 33 Azure regions now carry Oracle AI Database@Azure
• 5 more regions planned within 12 months of the Oct. 14, 2025 announcement
• 817% Q2 growth in Oracle’s multicloud database business
• $0 additional charge for AI Vector Search in 26ai
• 4 major hyperscalers carry Oracle Autonomous AI Lakehouse

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Oracle AI Database@Azure?

It is an Oracle AI Database service running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure colocated inside Microsoft Azure data centers, accessed through Azure portals, APIs, and Terraform, with metering that counts toward the Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment.

What’s new in Oracle AI Database 26ai?

Oracle AI Database 26ai is the long-term support release that replaces Oracle Database 23ai. It includes AI Vector Search at no additional charge, Unified Hybrid Vector Search across relational, text, JSON, knowledge graph, and spatial data, Select AI Agent and MCP Server Support for agentic AI workflows, AI Private Agent Factory as a no-code builder, and ML-KEM quantum-resistant encryption for data-in-flight.

How does Oracle AI Database@Azure differ from running Oracle on OCI directly?

Colocation with Azure gives lower latency to Azure-side applications and uses Azure-native identity, networking, and monitoring, with payment counted toward the Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment. An OCI tenancy is still required for some management tasks.

What is Oracle Autonomous AI Lakehouse?

It is a generally available service that combines Oracle Autonomous AI Database with the Apache Iceberg open table format, available on all four major hyperscalers (OCI, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud) and interoperable with Databricks and Snowflake on the same clouds.

What does the Oracle Database@Azure partner program allow?

Microsoft and Oracle partners who belong to both the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner program and the Oracle PartnerNetwork can purchase Oracle Database@Azure through the Microsoft Marketplace via a private offer and resell it to their customers.