IBM and Oracle Extend 40-Year Partnership

The strategic alliance between the two technology companies is targeting business leaders who are grappling with the challenge of converting AI experimentation into tangible commercial outcomes.

According to the IBM Institute for Business Value, organisations continue to encounter significant obstacles when attempting to integrate applications and data across multiple cloud environments—a friction point that could limit growth potential and market responsiveness.

"In 2025, 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 expanded collaboration introduces technologies and services focused on agentic AI, automation and hybrid cloud performance—capabilities designed to help businesses unlock new revenue streams while reducing operational friction.

For enterprises pursuing growth through digital channels, the announcement signals potential pathways to scale AI initiatives that have previously remained confined to pilot phases due to disconnected data infrastructures and siloed operations.

Charles and Corinne 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."

Red Hat integration drives adoption

The partnership is introducing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) availability for purchase and use within Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, moving beyond the current Bring Your Own Subscription model.

The rollout, expected later in 2025, could simplify procurement processes and accelerate hybrid cloud adoption for businesses managing complex technology estates.

From 2026, customers will be able to access Red Hat solutions through the Oracle Marketplace.

The integration will enable organisations to use Oracle Universal Credits to access RHEL through OCI, potentially streamlining budget allocation and reducing administrative overhead for technology leaders managing multi-vendor environments.

Operational efficiency through intelligent integration

A new connector between Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and the IBM Maximo Application Suite (MAS) aims to help joint customers manage business processes across finance, procurement, assets, facilities and environmental, social and governance (ESG) operations.

The integration includes built-in AI and analytics capabilities that could enable more responsive decision-making across operational functions.

IBM Envizi is launching as a SaaS offering on OCI, initially in Saudi Arabia, allowing businesses to manage ESG reporting alongside operational and financial data within a unified cloud environment.

This consolidation could prove valuable for organisations facing increasing regulatory scrutiny and stakeholder expectations around sustainability performance.

IBM Turbonomic has been verified to run on OCI, offering organisations tools to optimise compute, storage and network resources in real time while maintaining performance policies.

Additionally, IBM Guardium support is being extended to Oracle Exadata Database Service on Dedicated Infrastructure, providing enhanced capabilities to identify and respond to data security risks and compliance requirements—a growing concern as data breaches continue to pose significant business risks.

Scaling AI for enterprise growth

IBM Consulting is expanding 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 assume increasingly transformative roles in enterprises, IBM watsonx Orchestrate has introduced AI Agents for Learning and Development and Talent Acquisition, extending capabilities across Oracle Fusion Applications and third-party systems.

These developments aim to help organisations manage complex multi-agent workflows across both Oracle and non-Oracle applications – a capability that could prove crucial as businesses seek to automate knowledge work and scale operational capacity without proportional headcount increases.

IBM is deploying 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.

This strategic approach could help organisations allocate technology investments more efficiently while reducing migration risks.

"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 says in a statement from Oracle.

"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 build on IBM's recent acquisitions of Accelalpha and Applications Software Technologies, which strengthen the company's capabilities in supply chain, ERP and public sector transformation—sectors that could represent significant growth opportunities as organisations pursue digital modernisation strategies.