How multicloud is reshaping enterprise IT: Why Oracle is catching up with Microsoft and Google

Multicloud architecture has become the default model in global enterprise IT strategy, and Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL) is capitalizing on that pivot. In fiscal year 2025, Oracle’s multicloud database revenue grew 115% quarter-over-quarter in Q4, driven by integrations with hyperscalers like Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud. The American cloud infrastructure developer now operates 23 live multicloud datacenters, with 47 more under construction. This aggressive expansion is altering long-standing assumptions about Oracle’s role in the cloud ecosystem.

While Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure continue to dominate global IaaS share, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is quietly scaling in niche but mission-critical verticals. The shift toward multicloud adoption—where enterprises deliberately split workloads across vendors for resilience, compliance, and cost control—is giving Oracle a competitive runway. Unlike early-stage cloud strategies that favored vendor lock-in, modern enterprises are pursuing vendor diversification to mitigate risk and align with geopolitical and regulatory demands.

Oracle’s multicloud momentum is not an isolated phenomenon but a direct response to how enterprises are managing complexity across AI, compliance, and financial operations in 2025.

Why multicloud adoption is now core to enterprise cloud strategy in 2025

Enterprise cloud strategy has undergone a structural evolution. According to the Flexera 2024 State of the Cloud report, 87% of enterprises already use more than one public cloud, with 72% actively managing multicloud environments. These figures have only grown in early 2025, as AI workloads and data residency requirements push firms toward decentralized architectures.

The projected value of the global multicloud management market is expected to surpass USD 147 billion by 2034, rising from USD 16 billion in 2024, reflecting sustained enterprise interest. Generative AI acceleration, sovereign cloud mandates, and FinOps maturity are driving this shift. In a world where performance, compliance, and cost optimization must coexist, multicloud offers balance and flexibility.

Oracle’s strategy plays directly into this trend. OCI workloads can now operate inside Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud regions with native performance and latency. This interoperability gives Oracle a unique advantage, particularly for customers looking to colocate Oracle databases with AI tools in other cloud environments.

How Oracle’s multicloud architecture differs from Azure and Google Cloud

Oracle’s multicloud approach is fundamentally interoperability-driven. Whereas Microsoft Azure offers Azure Arc for hybrid integration and Google Cloud promotes Anthos for containerized workload mobility, Oracle focuses on native cross-cloud operation. Its Oracle Database@Azure initiative allows enterprise clients to run Oracle Exadata databases within Azure datacenters, eliminating egress charges and simplifying governance.

The American cloud infrastructure developer’s direct cloud interconnects with Microsoft and Google enable high-speed, low-latency communication between OCI and other environments. Oracle has made clear that rather than trying to pull customers into a walled ecosystem, it will meet them in their existing environments.

This strategy resonates in financial services, telco, and government sectors, where application sprawl across multiple platforms is the norm. It also provides Oracle with differentiated value in the AI infrastructure race. As clients build retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems that tap multiple data lakes and model endpoints, seamless multicloud access becomes a necessity rather than a luxury.

How OCI’s FY25 growth reveals deeper shifts in enterprise cloud infrastructure priorities

Oracle’s fourth-quarter fiscal 2025 results underscore the scale of its infrastructure ambitions. OCI revenue grew 52% year-over-year to USD 3.0 billion, while overall cloud revenue reached USD 6.7 billion, up 27%. Multicloud and hybrid workload demand were central to these gains, with chairman Larry Ellison citing 115% sequential growth in multicloud database revenue as a key driver.

Oracle is simultaneously advancing its Cloud@Customer business, a private deployment offering that places OCI infrastructure directly within client data centers. In regulated industries, where data must reside locally or where latency is non-negotiable, Cloud@Customer is emerging as a preferred alternative to public cloud-only models.

As of May 2025, Oracle had 29 Cloud@Customer deployments live and 30 more under implementation. This model supports not only sovereign data strategies but also AI inferencing and training workloads that require consistent GPU availability across environments.

Why institutional investors are betting on Oracle’s multicloud and sovereign cloud strategy

Oracle’s recent earnings beat was met with positive institutional sentiment, pushing its stock (NYSE: ORCL) to a record high of USD 200.89 on June 12. Analysts at Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, and BofA acknowledged that Oracle’s multicloud and sovereign cloud strategies are winning share in spaces previously assumed to be AWS or Azure-dominated.

OCI’s reputation among system integrators and public sector CIOs has also improved markedly. Industry analyst surveys indicate growing willingness to consider OCI for critical workloads when combined with existing Azure or Google investments. Gartner and Forrester research highlight that Oracle’s security model, database performance, and tenancy options align well with enterprise buyers focused on multicloud resilience.

Short interest in Oracle stock fell by over 30% post-earnings, while institutional accumulation indicators remained positive. However, sell-side notes caution that Oracle’s ongoing USD 21 billion capex strategy must translate into stronger free cash flow over the next 12–18 months to maintain confidence.

How AI adoption is accelerating multicloud workload distribution across Oracle, Azure, and Google

Looking ahead, the enterprise cloud is expected to become even more multicloud-centric, particularly in the context of AI application deployment. Enterprises are building stack-agnostic architectures using tools like Kubernetes, Kafka, and Terraform to manage portability across Oracle, Azure, and Google environments.

Oracle’s bet is that its infrastructure stack—optimized for AI, analytics, and transactional databases—will be chosen as a foundational layer in these environments. Its expanding global network of multicloud datacenters supports this thesis, enabling cross-cloud deployments in latency-optimized, region-compliant zones.

Furthermore, Oracle’s participation in initiatives like the FinOps Foundation’s FOCUS open cost standard, alongside AWS and Microsoft, signals a shift toward transparency and cross-vendor accountability in multicloud environments. As enterprises mature in their cost governance practices, Oracle’s simplified egress and pricing models may become more attractive.

Future outlook: Can Oracle scale further in the multicloud era?

Oracle Corporation’s fiscal 2026 outlook reflects an aggressive push to solidify its position as a multicloud infrastructure enabler for the global enterprise. The American cloud infrastructure developer is guiding for over 40% total cloud revenue growth in FY26, with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) expected to grow by more than 70% year-over-year. These growth rates signal more than mere momentum—they represent Oracle’s bid to scale OCI from a complementary workload platform to a core infrastructure choice in multicloud strategies.

These ambitious targets are closely tied to execution across two critical vectors: the expansion of multicloud deployments in tandem with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, and the accelerated roll-out of Cloud@Customer installations, which enable Oracle’s infrastructure to operate in secure, on-premises environments for regulated or latency-sensitive industries.

The multicloud datacenter count—currently at 23 live with another 47 under construction—is central to Oracle’s geographic availability strategy. These facilities are not just capacity expansions; they are tailored to serve sovereign cloud needs, regional compliance requirements, and edge AI inferencing scenarios. Oracle is positioning its footprint to meet enterprise IT leaders where they are—not just in North American hubs, but in regulated markets across Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East.

From a strategic standpoint, Oracle’s willingness to embed within competitors’ ecosystems—such as running Oracle Database services natively inside Microsoft Azure—remains a key differentiator. This approach appeals to CIOs and cloud procurement leads increasingly wary of single-vendor lock-in. In 2025, the rise of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) models, data residency laws, and multi-vendor security governance frameworks are making cross-cloud orchestration a board-level requirement. Oracle’s interoperability posture could unlock higher wallet share in hybrid cloud deals previously dominated by Microsoft or Amazon.

Analysts also point to Oracle’s maturing Cloud@Customer business as an underappreciated growth lever in the FY26 cycle. With 29 installations completed and 30 more under way, this model addresses three enterprise pain points simultaneously: regulatory control, data sovereignty, and on-prem AI workloads that require low-latency processing. In markets such as the EU, India, and the Middle East, where national data localization laws are tightening, this edge-cloud hybrid capability is giving Oracle a procurement advantage.

On the technology front, Oracle’s expansion of OCI GPU availability and AI infrastructure offerings is expected to play a more visible role in FY26. As more enterprise clients shift from AI proof-of-concepts to scaled inferencing and fine-tuning environments, latency, throughput, and tenancy isolation will drive workload placement decisions. Oracle’s ability to meet these demands while maintaining multicloud compatibility could further narrow the capability gap with Azure and Google Cloud in vertical AI infrastructure.

Institutional investors will be closely watching whether Oracle can maintain operating margin discipline during this scale-up phase. In FY25, the company posted strong operating income but saw free cash flow turn negative due to USD 21.2 billion in capex. The success of FY26 will hinge on the pace of RPO monetization, Cloud@Customer expansion, and improved consumption economics across its multicloud clients. Analysts believe that if Oracle can convert its record USD 138 billion in remaining performance obligations into predictable revenue streams, investor sentiment could pivot decisively bullish—even amid high infrastructure spending.

For enterprise buyers, the 2026 calculus will revolve around cost visibility, integration depth, and performance guarantees across vendors. Oracle’s unique mix of cloud neutrality, cross-cloud cost optimization, and regional infrastructure control may position it as the preferred second or third vendor in multicloud procurement strategies, especially for finance, healthcare, and government IT buyers.

In this evolving landscape, Oracle’s ability to maintain its interoperability-first strategy while scaling global infrastructure could redefine its role from a legacy database provider to a full-spectrum cloud infrastructure partner. While Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud remain ahead in raw market share, Oracle is gaining credibility where it matters most—in high-value, regulation-heavy workloads that reward flexibility, sovereignty, and performance.

Whether Oracle can scale further in the multicloud era will depend not only on infrastructure deployment speed, but also on its ability to translate architectural differentiation into margin-protected, consumption-led growth. If it succeeds, OCI may emerge not just as an alternative—but as an essential layer in enterprise multicloud strategy.