This is part 2 of a 3-part series; click here for part 1 and stay tuned for part 3.

In our previous post, we went over the first of three sections in our framework for describing how you can build the future with data and AI. That section was “Build faster with AI” by using generative AI services. Now we’re going to talk about how you can “Bring AI to your data” with the powerful capabilities built into our database services – and specifically, how to get more value from your business data as well as simplify with database convergence.

First, let’s set some context for this section. According to Gartner, 97% of data sits idle within organizations. Think about that: only 3% of a company’s data is being used to generate value. That’s like only using part of a hallway closet to live in rather than the whole house or apartment; lots of wasted potential.

And it’s also estimated that around 80% of all new enterprise data is unstructured, or not readily organized in database format for traditional analytic insight. Alas, what other cloud providers will tell you is that you need to have a different database optimized for each type of data: one for relational, one for unstructured, one for graph, one for time-series, one for vectorization, and so on.

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Simplify with database convergence

But what Oracle thinks is that simplicity is the way to go, that you only need one converged database which is sophisticated enough to do it all. Oracle Database 23ai is the world’s leading converged database, and not only does it support relational data, but it also supports XML, spatial, graph, key value, JSON models, vectorization—all in the same database engine with all models benefitting from Oracle’s industry-leading performance, availability, and security. And on top of this, data stored in all these models can be used together without costly integrations. Forget about juggling half a dozen databases: Oracle Database 23ai is built for you, the developer, regardless of your use case. Oracle can do it all.

And not only that, but you can also run your same trusted Oracle Database anywhere. This means: AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, OCI Dedicated Region, Exadata Cloud@Customer, or OCI proper in any of our public, private, government, and sovereign cloud regions. It’s literally the same database, with the same features, and even the same pricing, to simplify your architecture, minimize data movement, and give you performance, security, and peace of mind.

Get more value from your data

Now, we know that data sources are everywhere and that it’s not realistic to truly think that you can just have a simple stick figure diagram for your architecture. Things can get messy quite quickly. But the benefit of using Oracle Autonomous Database across all your environments is a comprehensive, consistent, calibrated view of your business.

Autonomous Database serves as the unifying data layer that bridges any gaps between data lakes and eliminates the need to replicate them. By logically centralizing your data in a secure and trusted platform, your organization can rely on a single source of truth regardless of source or type of data or analytic technique.

Here are some common examples of the ways in which organizations who already use Oracle Database continue to rely on it to uplevel their application development. We hear these reasons that customers choose to build apps on Oracle Database all the time: “I already use Oracle Database to build apps using my transactional data, AND NOW I want to …”

  • … “add GenAI to existing apps”
  • … “simplify AppDev across multiple data types”
  • … “build apps without exposing confidential data”
  • and so on.

Oracle Database is chock full of AI capabilities, and we’re going to highlight a few, but also note the ability to run Oracle Database 23ai Free on Mac, which offers the complete developer functionality of the converged database via container images for Arm-based Apple MacBook computers, including the latest M4 chip. Check out the November blog post for details.

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AI Vector Search, Select AI, and OCI Data Science

AI Vector Search is technology that enhances information retrieval by mapping queries to relevant data based on semantics using vectors to measure similarity. The capability is built into Oracle Database, meaning you don’t need a separate vector database to manage as with other providers. Being able to search on meaning rather than character strings can significantly improve the efficacy of things like finding similar support tickets, detecting manufacturing anomalies, biometric pattern recognition, and more.

Likewise, Select AI enables you to easily add natural language to new or existing applications without any custom coding. Select AI integrates with AI Vector Search to support retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to make queries that much more effective and can be used with a variety of AI providers—not only what Oracle offers directly, but also OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, the thousands of open source models available on Hugging Face, and more.

And that’s not all. OCI Data Science is a fully managed platform for teams to build, train, deploy, and manage ML models using Python and open source tools. Use a JupyterLab-based environment to experiment and develop models, scale up model training with powerful GPUs, take models into production, and keep them healthy with MLOps capabilities such as automated pipelines and model monitoring. Similarly, AI Quick Actions provides a no-code option for working open source LLMs; use AI Quick Actions to deploy, scale, and fine tune at the click of a button.

Oracle HeatWave

Now, we’ve been talking about Oracle Database and OCI Data Science, but there’s even more to the Oracle AI story. For organizations that do not need the full firepower of those options, Oracle HeatWave also offers a spectacular converged database solution.

With HeatWave, you can do it all with blazing fast performance: transaction processing, analytic processing, AutoML and predictive insights, lakehouse analytics across multiple sources and data types, and now also natural language engagement via GenAI Vector store. It’s truly incredible what our team has achieved with HeatWave.

As with Oracle Database, you can use all your data with Oracle HeatWave, and it offers converged multicloud support across AWS, Azure, and OCI. HeatWave provides a secure and trusted source of truth, reducing the errors and security vulnerabilities associated with exports and data movement. You don’t need to be an AI, ML, or analytics expert to get fully-caffeinated output leveraging the insights embedded within your organizational data. HeatWave reduces these risks by providing an integrated environment where all data can be queried and analyzed directly, reducing manual effort and the potential for data inconsistencies.

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Oracle Integration

And speaking of integration, Oracle offers a full range of integration and automation services to help you harness your entire ecosystem of apps and data because, let’s face it, the more data you have, and the more integrated that data is, the better AI will be able to provide precise, relevant results and recommendations. Common use cases include:

With our large library of application and data integration adapters, it doesn’t matter where the application is running—SaaS services, on-premises, third party apps, multicloud, wherever. Oracle Integration makes it easy to connect to anything, anywhere, anyhow. These pre-built connectivity solutions can drastically reduce your time to market and help provide data consistency across the organization to serve as the foundation for data driven, AI-powered innovation.

More OCI AI customer success

Let’s talk about two customers who are having strong success with the AI capabilities of Oracle Database and HeatWave.

Miracle Finland is an IT services company specializing in custom-tailored data management solutions. Prior to migrating to Oracle Database 23ai, they had data stored in many different databases according to data type and needed yet another database for AI vectors, which of course meant extensive ETL, data movement, and coding required for integration.

After moving to Oracle Database 23ai, which stores every type of business and vector data all in one converged solution, Miracle experienced much easier integration with far less ETL, data movement, and coding. Oracle Database 23ai empowered Miracle to bring AI to their data, thereby accelerating output and boosting service quality.

SmarterD is an integrated IT and security risk management independent software vendor (ISV) catering to small and medium businesses. Before migrating to HeatWave, their architecture and workflow consisted of multiple complex manual steps requiring AI expertise to create and integrate various components, including data movement, which had the potential for error and increased risk.

After moving to HeatWave, SmarterD now enjoys the simplicity of just one integrated, automated, and secure solution with in-database AI models, an automated in-database vector store, and a built-in chat interface for natural language querying. HeatWave empowered SmarterD to move from development to production in only one month and deliver additional modules for new use cases in just two to four weeks. Incredible!

This is part 2 of a 3-part series; click here for part 1 and stay tuned for part 3.