IBM and Oracle Expand Partnership to Advance Agentic AI and Hybrid Cloud
- Strategic expansion of 38-year partnership between tech giants IBM and Oracle
- watsonx Orchestrate's availability on OCI enables seamless multi-agent workflows
- IBM's Granite AI models will be accessible through OCI Data Science
- watsonx.ai certification on OCI provides enhanced scalability and performance
- Expanded IBM Consulting services for AI implementation and workload migration
- Initial Envizi ESG Suite release limited to Saudi Arabia
- Joint go-to-market approach limited to select markets only
Insights
IBM-Oracle partnership expands watsonx AI capabilities to Oracle Cloud, creating comprehensive multi-agent ecosystem for enterprise AI deployment across hybrid environments.
This expanded partnership between IBM and Oracle represents a significant strategic positioning in the enterprise AI landscape. The integration of IBM's watsonx portfolio with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) creates a comprehensive multi-agent ecosystem addressing one of the most challenging aspects of enterprise AI adoption: seamless operation across diverse systems and applications.
The July availability of watsonx Orchestrate on OCI stands out as particularly valuable. This integration enables AI agent workflows that span both Oracle and non-Oracle applications, creating a cohesive environment where multiple AI agents can collaborate across business processes. By working with Oracle's AI Agent Studio and OCI Generative AI Agents, this approach allows enterprises to build agent-based automation that functions across their entire technology landscape rather than in isolated silos.
The deployment architecture shows remarkable flexibility, with watsonx Orchestrate running on Red Hat OpenShift on OCI across public, sovereign, government, and Oracle Alloy regions. This hybrid cloud approach acknowledges the reality that enterprises operate in mixed environments with varying regulatory requirements. Organizations can perform AI inferencing directly on OCI where their data already resides, minimizing data movement challenges that often complicate AI implementations.
IBM's Granite models becoming available through OCI Data Science expands Oracle's AI offerings with efficient, fit-for-purpose models that complement larger foundation models. Combined with watsonx.ai certification on OCI, this gives organizations more options for developing and deploying AI services where their applications and data already live.
The expanded IBM consulting services complement the technical integration by helping customers orchestrate AI agents across platforms while managing organizational change. This acknowledges that successful AI implementation requires not just technology but expertise in transformation and process redesign.
This partnership reflects a pragmatic approach to enterprise AI deployment, recognizing that organizations need solutions that work within their existing technology landscape rather than requiring wholesale migrations. The focus on agentic AI positions both companies to address an emerging trend that IDC analyst Ritu Jyoti describes as providing "significant advantages, streamlining how work gets done and unlocking growth and innovation."
Organizations today are deploying AI throughout their operations, looking to take advantage of the extraordinary advancements in generative AI models, tools, and agents. AI agents that can provide a single, easy-to-use interface to complete tasks are emerging as key tools to help simplify the deployment and use of AI across enterprise operations and functions.
"AI delivers the most impactful value when it works seamlessly across an entire business," said Greg Pavlik, executive vice president, AI and Data Management Services, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. "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."
Watsonx Orchestrate to support multi-agent workflows
To give customers a consistent way to build and manage agents across multi-agent, multi-system business processes, spanning both Oracle and non-Oracle applications and data sources, IBM is making its watsonx Orchestrate AI agent offerings available on OCI in July. This multi-agent approach using wastonx Orchestrate is designed to work with the expansive AI agent offerings embedded within the Oracle AI Agent Studio for Fusion Applications, as well as OCI Generative AI Agents, and OCI's other AI services. It extends the ecosystem around Oracle Fusion Applications to enable further functionality across third-party and custom applications and data sources. The first use cases being addressed are in human resources. The watsonx Orchestrate agents will perform AI inferencing on OCI, which many customers use to host their data, AI, and other applications.
IBM agents run in watsonx Orchestrate on Red Hat OpenShift on OCI, including in public, sovereign, government, and Oracle Alloy regions, to enable customers to address specific regulatory and privacy requirements. The agents can also be hosted on-premises or in multicloud environments for true hybrid cloud capabilities.
IBM Granite Models Hosted on OCI Data Science
To give customers more choice of fit-for-purpose, compact and efficient models, Oracle intends to make the IBM Granite family of AI models available through its OCI Data Science via AI Quick Actions. To streamline Granite access, the open-source Granite models are expected to be available within OCI as a cached LLM in the second half of this year.
"By integrating our AI with Oracle's offerings, we're enabling businesses to easily deploy and manage AI agents across their enterprise," said Kareem Yusuf Ph.D, Senior Vice President, Ecosystem, Strategic Partners & Initiatives, IBM. "Our collaboration with Oracle illustrates how IBM and our partners offer clients a seamless and flexible path to scale AI."
IBM Software to be Available on OCI
Oracle and IBM also plan to make IBM Envizi ESG Suite available on OCI, with an initial release in
IBM's watsonx.ai is now certified to run on OCI, enabling customers to leverage its industry-leading scalability and performance for bare metal and virtual machine instances with the benefits of the Red Hat OpenShift. Watsonx.ai is an enterprise-grade developer studio for building, running, and managing AI applications. Bringing watsonx.ai to OCI can help organizations develop AI services on OCI, where they may already have applications and data, and deploy them into their application of choice with a collection of the APIs, tools, models, and runtimes.
Expanded Oracle Services from IBM Consulting
IBM is introducing expanded consulting services to help customers turn enterprise strategy into enterprise outcomes by enabling the use of AI agents across multiple platforms to transform end-to-end business processes. Leveraging deep technology and industry expertise, IBM Consulting will help customers orchestrate their agentic ecosystem by integrating, building, and scaling AI agents, including native Oracle AI agents, watsonx Orchestrate AI agents, and agents from across IBM's partner ecosystem. IBM Consulting will also advise customers on how AI agents impact enterprise operating models and the workforce, including change management and enabling new ways of working. IBM consultants bring deep expertise in transforming core business processes like HR and supply chain as well as capabilities in its AI-powered delivery platform, IBM Consulting Advantage, to deliver value quickly.
IBM Consulting is offering new services that leverage AI-powered assets and methods to help Oracle customers migrate their workloads from on-premises virtual machines to Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization on OCI bare metal cloud. This service helps customers migrate and modernize their infrastructure as they deploy with the proven virtualization of the OpenShift container platform running on OCI to provide flexible infrastructure for both legacy applications and AI and hybrid multicloud workloads.
IBM brings deep expertise in business transformation with OCI and Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications, backed by a 38-year strategic partnership spanning technology and services, thousands of consultants who are certified across core Oracle technologies, and the acquisitions of Oracle consultancies Accelalpha and Applications Software Technology LLC.
Oracle and IBM also intend to pilot a joint go-to-market approach in select markets to help bring these new services and capabilities to customers.
"Agents are becoming an important strategic advantage for organizations to optimize operations and deliver better customer and employee experiences," said Ritu Jyoti, IDC General Manager and Group Vice President. "Today's most advanced agents are able to interact across different systems and processes, unleashing greater productivity and driving wider adoption. The Agentic AI approach IBM is taking with Oracle is a leading example of how the ability to orchestrate agentic workflows across systems can drive significant advantages, streamlining how work gets done and unlocking growth and innovation."
For more information about this collaboration between IBM and Oracle, please visit: https://www.ibm.com/consulting/oracle
Statements regarding IBM's future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice and represent goals and objectives only.
About IBM
IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain a competitive edge in their industries. Thousands of governments and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM's breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service. Visit www.ibm.com for more information.
About Oracle
Oracle offers integrated suites of applications plus secure, autonomous infrastructure in the Oracle Cloud. For more information about Oracle (NYSE: ORCL), please visit us at www.oracle.com.
Trademarks
Oracle, Java, MySQL and NetSuite are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation. NetSuite was the first cloud company—ushering in the new era of cloud computing.
Media Contacts:
Holli Haswell, IBM Communications
hhaswell@us.ibm.com
Calin Gunn, Oracle Communications
calin.gunn@oracle.com
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SOURCE IBM
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