AI, Agents & Cloud: IBM & Oracle Extend 40 Year Partnership

Technology veterans IBM and Oracle have marked four decades of strategic partnership by unveiling a fresh wave of AI and hybrid cloud innovations designed to help businesses modernise operations, improve efficiency and scale AI with greater flexibility. 

“This year, we celebrate the 40th year of the strategic partnership between IBM and Oracle,” Charles Jenkins, Global Strategic Partnerships at IBM and Corinne Koppel, Global & Americas Oracle Practice Lead at IBM Consulting, say in an announcement from the IBM Newsroom. 

“To mark the milestone, we are advancing our partnership to help meet our customers’ evolving needs and help them succeed in the era of AI and hybrid cloud.”

The announcement comes as organisations experimenting with AI are struggling to scale initiatives for reasons such as disconnected data infrastructures and siloed operations. 

Recent study by the IBM Institute for Business Value reveals that many businesses continue to face barriers when integrating applications and data across multiple cloud environments.

To support digital transformation, IBM and Oracle are introducing new technologies and services focused on agentic AI, automation and hybrid cloud performance. 

The pair add: “What better way to build on 40 years of partnership than with these new AI and hybrid capabilities to help customers modernise, orchestrate and scale improved outcomes across their operations?

“We’re excited to continue to expand our work with Oracle to help our customers transform their business and unlock new levels of productivity and competitive advantage.”

Expanding hybrid cloud capabilities 

Simplifying hybrid cloud adoption is on top of the priority chart for these companies.

One major part of this, would be the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to purchase and use within the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure – thereby offering a more integrated approach over the current Bring Your Own Subscription model. This rollout is expected later this year.  

Customers can also access Red Hat solutions through the Oracle Marketplace, starting in 2026. 

To further streamline the process of building, modernising and scaling applications across hybrid environments, customers will be able to use Oracle Universal Credits to access RHEL through OCI. 

The extended partnership rests on bringing greater operational flexibility while reducing complexity across cloud deployments. 

AI, automation and data security 

IBM and Oracle have plans in place for flexible platforms that “bring applications, automation and data together to ease complexity and produce business value”.

This includes a new connector between Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and the IBM Maximo Application Suite (MAS), which would help joint customers to manage business processes across varying fields, like finance, procurement, assets, facilities and ESG operations. 

The integration will help organisations manage processes more effectively using built-in AI and analytics.

IBM Envizi is set to launch as a SaaS offering on OCI, initially in Saudi Arabia, enabling businesses to manage environmental, social and governance reporting alongside operational and financial data within the same cloud environment.

Another addition is IBM Turbonomic, which has been verified to run on OCI, helping organisations optimise compute, storage and network resources in real time while maintaining performance policies. 

With security being a prime business risk, IBM Guardium support is also being extended to Oracle Exadata Database Service on Dedicated Infrastructure, to give businesses enhanced tools to identify and respond to data security risks and compliance requirements.

New AI and agentic services 

IBM Consulting has plans to expand its support for Oracle customers with a new managed service offering for Maximo on OCI. 

The service is designed to help businesses move Maximo workloads to the same cloud environment as Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP while benefiting from ongoing infrastructure management and tailored deployment support.

As AI agents take on transformative roles in enterprises, IBM watsonx Orchestrate has introduced AI Agents for Learning and Development and Talent Acquisition, thereby extending capabilities across Oracle Fusion Applications and third-party systems. 

The latest developments aim to help organisations manage complex multi-agent workflows across both Oracle and non-Oracle applications.

Additionally, IBM is using its AI-driven modernisation intelligence platform, IBM Txture, to help businesses identify which workloads should be prioritised for OCI and how to modernise them effectively.

“AI delivers the most impactful value when it works seamlessly across an entire business,” Greg Pavlik, Executive Vice President, AI and Data Management Services at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure had previously said. 

“IBM and Oracle have been collaborating to drive customer success for decades and our expanded partnership will provide customers new ways to help transform their businesses with AI.” 

The capabilities announced builds on IBM’s recent acquisitions of Accelalpha and Applications Software Technologies, which strengthen the tech giant’s expert grasp in supply chain, ERP and public sector transformation.