US cloud giant Oracle is looking to expand its GenAI capabilities as competition in the cloud market intensifies, and an increasing number of companies release AI products and services.
The rise of AI, which requires large amounts of data to train and deploy, is rapidly fueling the demand for cloud computing services and data centres.
In an interview with CNBC, Rondy Ng, executive vice president of applications development at Oracle, explained how the company has been adding new GenAI capabilities on top of its already mature AI systems.
“The classic AI is very good in terms of detecting patterns or predicting numbers … but you cannot use large language models to predict numbers,” Ng told CNBC.
“So we combined the predictive numbering capability with the explained ability in words. So the two together become very powerful and you need both. In the past many years, the number prediction part is already very mature. As part of the product we continue to evolve that and it’s not going to stop. GenAI is basically the talk of the town right now,” he added.
In March, Oracle released a set of GenAI capabilities to its Fusion Cloud Applications Suite, allowing businesses to use GenAI to manage their finances, HR tasks, supply chain and other functions.
Oracle stated that these functions were intended to save businesses time and improve their daily productivity.
Oracle’s GenAI can create contextual commentary for financial forecasts, helping financial departments easily explain their work to the rest of the company.
Its GenAI can explain key factors driving financial predictions, which Oracle stated can help build trust in business forecasts.
According to Ng, Oracle is at an advantage with its implementation of GenAI compared to its rivals.
“GenAI services [are] basically a huge advantage comparing with our competition,” Ng said.
“The competition needs to work with different companies and cloud providers for that infrastructure and those kinds of services. We actually take everything into an integrated stack, and we consume that,” he added.
According to GlobalData forecasts, the total cloud computing market will be worth $1.4trn in 2027, having grown at a compound annual growth rate of 17.1% from $638.6bn in 2022.
