Oracle CEO Safra Catz has defended the company’s cloud business performance in an interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer, after the stock fell 12% last week following disappointing earnings and guidance.
Oracle’s cloud business is booking billion-dollar deals
Catz said that Oracle is seeing high demand for its cloud services, especially in the artificial intelligence (AI) domain. She claimed that the company is booking billion-dollar deals and winning every competition against other cloud providers.
“For us, we have so much demand that we just keep booking it,” Catz said. “In fact, in the first week of this quarter, we booked another billion and a half just in AI workloads, and we keep winning every single competition against others because our system’s so much newer. We have access to the chips and so, because it’s so much newer. It is much faster.”
Oracle has been trying to catch up with the cloud market leaders, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. According to Gartner, Oracle had only 2.3% of the global cloud infrastructure market share in 2020, compared to AWS’s 40.8%, Azure’s 19.7%, and Google’s 9%.
Oracle spent last year setting up the base for its cloud business
Catz explained that Oracle spent much of last year setting up the base for its cloud business, by building its own computers and optimizing its software for the cloud. She said that the company is now filling its data centers with its new technology, which is faster and more efficient than the competition.
“In the cloud, time is money,” she said. “We’re just rolling out and filling those data centers and, costs a lot. But remember, we build our own computers. We’ve got everything optimized, and it’s much, much faster.”
Oracle recently announced a partnership with Microsoft to put its database hardware inside Azure’s data centers, allowing customers to access Oracle’s database services through Azure’s cloud platform. Catz said that this deal is beneficial for both companies, as it expands their customer base and creates more value for their products.
Oracle’s acquisition of Cerner will pay off in the long run
Catz also commented on Oracle’s acquisition of Cerner, an electronic health record (EHR) software company, which was announced in August. She said that the deal will help Oracle modernize Cerner’s software and migrate it to the cloud, creating more opportunities for growth and innovation.
“We don’t recognize a lot of that revenue upfront, but over time, that’s where the big payoff is,” she said. “Remember, we didn’t want to leave Cerner just as it was. We wanted to modernize it, and we’re doing that with all of the technology that we have to do it.”
Catz said that Oracle is confident in its cloud strategy and expects to see more positive results in the future. She said that the company is focused on delivering value to its customers and shareholders.
