Miranda Nash

Companies across sectors are racing to implement AI solutions that deliver tangible value, with large technology providers competing to offer the most seamless integration of these capabilities into existing business systems.

Oracle, one of the world's largest enterprise software companies, has positioned itself at the forefront of this transformation by taking a distinctive approach to AI implementation. Rather than offering AI as a separate, premium service layer, the company has pursued a strategy of embedding intelligence throughout its technology stack – from infrastructure through to end-user applications.

This integration has accelerated in recent months with the rise of AI agents – autonomous software entities designed to perform specific business tasks with minimal human intervention. These agents represent the next evolution in enterprise AI, moving beyond simple automation to more complex, contextual decision-making that spans departmental boundaries.

Oracle recently announced the availability of AI Agent Studio for Fusion applications, a tool that enables customers and partners to build and deploy AI agents within their enterprise systems. The announcement represents another step in Oracle’s strategy of embedding artificial intelligence capabilities throughout its technology stack, from infrastructure to applications.

In an exclusive interview at the company’s CloudWorld Tour event in London, Miranda Nash, Group Vice President at Oracle AI, outlined the company's approach to AI integration and explained how the new AI Agent Studio fits into the firm's broader vision.

Oracle AI strategy places data at centre of enterprise AI adoption

Miranda is responsible for bringing Oracle AI into the company’s Fusion applications. This involves embedding generative AI, predictive AI and now agentic AI within Oracle’s cloud applications suite.

“Oracle AI is the only brand we give to AI, which is basically infused at every layer of our stack. It starts with the infrastructure, a critical part of the picture, which was designed from the ground up for training and inferencing. That’s the foundation. Then we have AI services and data services within our database, and at the top layer are the SaaS applications - Fusion,” she explains.

The Oracle strategy for AI in Fusion applications consists of three components, with data as the starting point.

“We really believe it has to start with the data. Every time when I'm talking with customers, the story is we need you to focus on the data reconciliation. That is the foundation. You’ve got to have consistent data to be able to drive the best AI, and you get that by being in Fusion applications in the cloud,” says Miranda.

She points out that the power comes from having multiple modules across different parts of the business sharing the same data model and security model, which means the AI benefits compound across the organisation.

The second part of the strategy involves embedding AI within applications as a standard feature of being in the cloud, with no additional cost.

“That means that the job of Oracle folks like me is to be curating models, constantly testing, and making AI just part of what we do. No added keys. No added cost for the infrastructure or the GPUs. It's just included,” Miranda states.

This approach is possible because Oracle operates as a single technology stack. With models hosted in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, the company can deliver value to customers without passing on additional costs.

“Someone recently asked me, ‘Why do you do it that way?’ Well, this is such a big change. We want to lower the barriers to adoption, help our customers get AI in production. Let's remove cost as a barrier. That’s a fundamental strategy,” she explains.

Oracle AI Agent Studio builds on years of internal development

Oracle has been developing AI capabilities for some time, starting with predictive AI, then rapidly moving to announce over 100 generative AI features after ChatGPT emerged. Now, the company has announced embedded AI agents.

Miranda notes that Oracle has approached AI development in what might be considered a reverse order compared to other vendors.

“What’s exciting is that we've done this in almost a backwards order compared to other vendors, where first we’re embedding the pre-built agents. We brought those to market and the tools that our own teams used – our own product managers used to build those agents. Now, we’ve been refining that, and that’s what we’re announcing today as being available for customers and partners,” she says.

The AI Agent Studio for Fusion applications is the tool that Oracle has been refining over time as they used it internally to deliver agents.

Iteration has been central to Oracle’s approach. “Iteration is the key metric for AI success, and so what we’ve done is always iterated on the thing that matters – the agents. And what falls out of that are learnings that we embed into the tooling, that we embed into best practices, and that we can now help our customers with,” Miranda explains.

When it comes to ensuring these agents are enterprise-ready in terms of reliability, security and compliance, Oracle takes a straightforward approach.

“We keep it super simple. We basically use the existing security within Fusion applications. It's the same role-based access controls that are already in place. An agent is always operating with the profile of a known human user. So that’s the simple way that we ensure these are secure,” says Miranda.

For compliance and reliability, the AI Agent Studio provides a testing and validation platform. “We want to help customers basically try out our agents with realistic user queries, user questions, realistic data, and then make sure they’re confident in the answers that it gives. That helps them earn the trust in the agents that they require to put into production,” she adds.

Oracle customers use AI as catalyst for cloud migration

On the topic of ethical AI, Miranda emphasises the importance of keeping customers informed about changing regulations.

“It starts with helping our customers make sure they’re always within the bounds of all these changing regulations. That means, of course, knowing what those are and keeping our customers abreast of all the information they need to make their own risk assessment,” she states.

Miranda acknowledges that organisations have different risk profiles and says Oracle aims to empower customers to make judgments for themselves with the right facts.

When asked about customer conversations at CloudWorld, Miranda reports that AI is becoming a major driver for cloud migration.

“I’m definitely talking to more and more customers who finally have that catalyst to get to the cloud. They’ve been stalling or whatever – not stalling, but it’s challenging, right, and other things get in the way. And so, AI is a massive catalyst to change. I hear that loud and clear,” she says.

Customers who made the move to the cloud years ago are now in a position to rapidly adopt the new AI features Oracle releases each quarter. Their challenge now is keeping up with new developments and integrating them into their processes.

Miranda finds the customer response to Oracle's AI capabilities particularly rewarding.

“What excites me is the way customers are responding and the fact that they really are seeing an opportunity to change that sort of had been inaccessible to them, if you will,” she says.

The value comes from automating processes that were previously considered too complex for automation. “Automating back-office processes that we never even attempted to automate in the past because it would have required too many rules. It was too complicated, you know, it was just easier to have a human do it. And now we can really start to take away that drudgery that humans were stuck in the middle of effectively because we didn’t write good enough software. Now we can automate that part with the power of AI agents,” she explains.

Oracle AI Studio sets itself apart through data integration

She shares an example of how AI is changing roles in unexpected ways. “I heard a story about a school’s use of AI for detecting weapons in a more effective way and having an agent around that. The thing that hit me was that the teachers now were looking in the eyes of the students and seeing how they felt. Like, are you upset? What's going on with you? They were able to engage on a human level rather than doing the annoying work that is now handled by AI agents.”

Miranda concludes by highlighting what differentiates Oracle’s AI Studio from competitors who have made similar announcements.

“What is different and special about this situation is the closeness to the data. So that native understanding of Fusion business objects and user context is super easy to incorporate. What we think is that the power is where you’ve got your data centre of gravity in Fusion, you can develop these agents in a really safe and powerful way, and they span across the enterprise so you can start to bridge some of the silos. Where Finance didn’t talk to Sales, or that kind of thing – agents start to really span the entire enterprise.”

To read the full article in the magazine, click HERE.

Explore the latest edition of Technology Magazine and be part of the conversation at our global conference series, Tech & AI LIVE.

Discover all our upcoming events and secure your tickets today.

Technology Magazine is a BizClik brand