Today’s topics include Oracle making Platinum level service the standard for Autonomous Database, and Microsoft positioning Azure’s cloud as the “world’s computer.”
Kicking off its third Media Day of the year on May 7, Oracle announced that it is extending the capabilities of its enterprise Autonomous Database in the cloud with the addition of autonomous analytics, application integration and developer services.
CEO Mark Hurd also announced a significant change in Oracle’s service plans, making what used to be the premium-priced Platinum grade services the standard offering.
Customers of Oracle’s Fusion software-as-a-service applications can now get a more comprehensive set of support services at no extra cost, including 24/7 rapid response technical support, proactive technical monitoring, “success planning” consultation and adoption guidance.
Oracle has also set up a new on-demand education resource portal that includes 2,000 new training guides and is launching a set of Advanced Services available at an extra charge for companies that need specific expertise while growing their deployments.
At the Build 2018 developer conference in Seattle on May 7, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella described how his company is investing heavily in toolsets and IT services backed by its cloud to help coders create apps to harness artificial intelligence and the internet of things and deliver ubiquitous computing experiences.
Nadella said, “Azure is being built as the world’s computer,” citing the 130 new Azure capabilities that Microsoft shipped in the past year, and teasing more developments to come, including open-sourcing the Azure IoT Edge runtime. By open-sourcing its runtime, capabilities are more accessible to the developers at large.
Microsoft also announced that Azure IoT Edge supports Custom Vision, which enables coders to build applications that can recognize objects in images using machine learning neural networks.