Tech rivals Microsoft, Oracle expand cloud partnership
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Heavyweight tech firms Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) on Thursday announced an expansion of their cloud partnership under which customers will get direct access to the former's database services on the latter's Azure cloud platform.
Oracle (ORCL) will collocate its Exadata hardware in Microsoft's (MSFT) Azure data centers, thereby improving network performance and the database available to its customers. 
The new offering, called "Oracle Database@Azure," will deliver the performance, scale and workload aspects of Oracle Database along with the security and flexibility of Microsoft Azure, including artificial intelligence (AI) services like Azure OpenAI.
"This combination provides customers with more flexibility regarding where they run their workloads. It also provides a streamlined environment that simplifies cloud purchasing and management between Oracle Database and Azure services," MSFT and ORCL said in a statement.
"Our expanded partnership with Oracle (ORCL) will make Microsoft Azure the only other cloud provider to run Oracle's (ORCL) database services and help our customers unlock a new wave of cloud-powered innovation," Microsoft (MSFT) top boss Satya Nadella said. 
ORCL co-founder and current chief technology officer Larry Ellison highlighted the fact that "most customers already use multiple clouds."
ORCL and MSFT added that customers would be able to buy Oracle Database@Azure though the Azure Marketplace, leveraging their existing Azure agreements. 
Oracle (ORCL) stock earlier closed +1.7% at $113.69, while Microsoft (MSFT) ended +0.8% at $338.70. 
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