Oracle Patent May Help Cloud Platforms Work Together

Oracle wants your data to go with the flow. 

The company is seeking to patent a system for provisioning and managing “serverless database resources within a multi-cloud infrastructure,” aiming to make the movement of data and cross-pollination of services between private clouds frictionless. 

“Each cloud environment provides a closed ecosystem for its subscribing customers,” Oracle said in the filing. “As a result, a customer of a cloud environment is restricted to using the services offered by that cloud environment.”

Oracle’s system would break down that barrier, allowing a customer to deploy a service from one cloud platform within another. Before approving a request to do so, the system would ensure that the primary private cloud platform has the available computing resources, a data center is close enough to ensure low latency, and can comply with regulatory needs of the customer’s region, such as different state laws. 

The cloud service is then deployed into the primary private cloud platform, meaning that the system automatically spins up virtual machines to run the service, and a secure data flow is set up between it and the other cloud platform. The system may also split different workflows between different data center regions that have higher availability. 

The goal is to allow cloud customers to get the best of both worlds when it comes to multi-cloud architecture: Rather than having data and services living in individual silos of different cloud environments, Oracle’s tech could offer interoperability. 

Patent applications like this from Oracle are no surprise. The company’s primary moneymakers are its cloud services, though it still sits behind the hyperscalers in terms of market share, hovering at around 3% in the most recent quarter, according to CRN. 

But with the increasing demand for AI, cloud demand is rapidly skyrocketing. One report from Canalys found that cloud infrastructure spending jumped 21% in the first quarter, reaching $90 billion, largely as a result of AI. Since the rising tide of AI is raising all cloud providers’ ships, tech like this patent describes could make enterprises’ lives easier by making cloud providers play nice with one another.