June 24, 2019

After posting a dynamite fiscal Q4 and showing for the first time the revenue impact of its Autonomous Database, Oracle moves up a spot to #5 on the Cloud Wars Top 10. This pushes IBM down to #6. For the past couple of years, as the revolutionary Autonomous Database was moving from concept to prototype to trials in the field, Oracle had to rely on faith and hope to sustain its credibility as a multifaceted player in the cloud.

If Oracle’s able to generate strong demand for the Autonomous Database, then that means its currently tiny IaaS business will begin to grow rapidly as well, because the new database will run only on Oracle’s “Gen2” infrastructure. Founder Larry Ellison put it this way on last week’s earnings call: “Right now, we’re getting signals from our usage in our Gen2 Cloud that is signaling much faster Autonomous Database growth than we’re seeing from our sales forecast. It’s just kind of interesting—but encouraging.”