Oracle NYSE: ORCL Chief Executive Officer Mike Sicilia said artificial intelligence is reshaping customer conversations, software development and the company’s approach to selling cloud applications, database technology and infrastructure.
Speaking at the Deutsche Bank Technology Conference, Sicilia said the pace of AI change has accelerated to the point that discussions are evolving monthly rather than annually. He described AI as a positive disruption for the software industry, saying the technology is enabling substantially greater productivity from software engineers while not eliminating the need for domain expertise and experience in mission-critical systems.
“The fact that we’re able to disrupt ourselves and become so productive is because we have decades of experience with building, delivering mission-critical applications [and] mission-critical infrastructure,” Sicilia said.
AI ROI, Pricing and Governance
Sicilia said enterprise customers are increasingly focused on the practical questions surrounding AI adoption: how to achieve value, control costs, manage organizational change and identify near- and long-term returns. He said Oracle’s full-stack position—spanning infrastructure, databases and applications—supports discussions about predictable return on investment.
As an example, Sicilia pointed to Oracle’s human capital management applications, where the company can use patterns from its 14,000 live Fusion application customers to help organizations assess the AI resources and costs required to increase hiring and candidate screening activity.
Oracle offers multiple approaches to AI monetization, including token bundles, usage-based consumption, user-based pricing and outcome-based arrangements, Sicilia said. He expects all of those models to remain relevant, with outcome-based pricing becoming more important as customers seek measurable AI returns.
He also emphasized governance, noting that Oracle has used AI internally and has had to manage employee token consumption. Enterprise and government customers, he said, want the ability to oversee different consumption and outcome models, receive usage alerts and measure the return on AI spending.
Embedded AI and Cloud Migration
Sicilia said Oracle sees embedded AI as a significant factor in Fusion application sales because customers can access AI capabilities as part of the application rather than deploying separate tools. He said this approach may also offer cybersecurity advantages over adding third-party products to existing on-premises systems.
Oracle’s AI Agent Studio allows customers and partners to build agents on the Fusion platform, Sicilia said. He characterized the approach as configuration rather than traditional customization, with agents built at the metadata and API layers. Oracle upgrades and patches those services alongside its Fusion applications, he added.
The company continues to see a substantial opportunity in moving customers from on-premises environments to cloud services. Sicilia said roughly half of Oracle’s install base has migrated from on-premises systems to the cloud, leaving another half still to transition. He said those remaining opportunities include heavily regulated industries such as banking, utilities and healthcare.
While smaller and midsize businesses experienced longer sales cycles amid concerns about the future of software-as-a-service, Sicilia said Oracle did not see a slowdown in large enterprise and government demand. He said deferred revenue has grown faster than in-quarter revenue, which he described as a sign of future booking strength.
Database, Multi-Cloud and Industry Focus
Sicilia said Oracle’s database remains central to its AI strategy because private, mission-critical enterprise data is essential for inference and retrieval-augmented generation. He highlighted database features including vector search, blockchain tables and encryption technologies.
In healthcare, Sicilia said Oracle uses an encryption key for each patient record, an approach intended to strengthen security while maintaining performance. He said Oracle’s experience across applications, infrastructure and databases allows it to offer these capabilities as integrated services rather than requiring customers to assemble third-party products.
Oracle has expanded its multi-cloud database efforts, with Sicilia saying the company now has 22 regions live with Amazon. He said Oracle reported more than 400% growth in its multi-cloud database business in its fourth quarter, with growth primarily concentrated in its earlier partnerships before the Amazon deployment.
The company is model-agnostic and uses both proprietary and open models, Sicilia said. He expects open-source models to have a role in enterprise AI, although regulated industries may lean more toward enterprise-provided models because of safety and security requirements.
Sicilia also said Oracle has reorganized its sales organization around industries globally. The company is using fewer sellers who call at higher executive levels, he said, while expanding coverage into previously uncovered territories.
Implementation Speed and Outlook
AI tools may also reduce implementation timelines, Sicilia said. He said Oracle has seen the time to deploy electronic health record systems at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs decline to eight months from 18 months, using the same implementation personnel supported by AI tooling.
Looking ahead, Sicilia said investors may focus on Oracle’s ability to deliver large-scale computing capacity and provide tangible AI proof points. He said healthcare could be a particularly important area for demonstrating AI’s ability to improve patient outcomes.
About Oracle (NYSE:ORCL)
Oracle Corporation is a multinational technology company that develops and sells database software, cloud engineered systems, enterprise software applications and related services. The company is widely known for its flagship Oracle Database and a portfolio of enterprise-grade software products that support data management, application development, analytics and middleware. Over recent years Oracle has expanded its focus to include cloud infrastructure and cloud applications, positioning itself as a provider of both platform and software-as-a-service solutions for large organizations.
Oracle's product and service offerings include Oracle Database and the Autonomous Database, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), enterprise resource planning (ERP), human capital management (HCM) and supply chain management (SCM) cloud applications (often grouped under Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications), middleware such as WebLogic, and developer technologies including Java and MySQL.
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