Mahesh Thiagarajan on Oracle Cloud Strategy and Innovation | Cloud Wars Live

In today's Cloud Wars Live, Mahesh Thiagarajan, EVP, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, speaks with Bob Evans about Oracle’s bold strategy to lead in the AI infrastructure race. He details how Oracle is scaling zeta-level compute, launching a 1.5 gigawatt GPU campus, and engineering full-stack solutions that combine bare-metal hardware, custom networking, and advanced software. With OCI’s rapid innovation and massive scale, Oracle is positioning itself as a serious challenger to cloud incumbents like AWS, Microsoft, and Google Cloud.

Scaling AI at Oracle

The Big Themes:

• Enterprise Data Continuity and Cloud Strategy: Enterprises rely on mission-critical data, such as databases, and migrating that data to the cloud remains a major strategic priority. The challenge isn’t simply moving data: It’s building a cloud platform that delivers real value to customers. As Thiagarajan and his team began developing Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to support these needs, they focused on core fundamentals: performance, cost efficiency, and security. This illustrates that for today’s cloud providers, success isn’t just about innovative features, but about engineering deep, resilient infrastructure.
• Customer‑First Execution: Thiagarajan repeatedly states there is no perfect playbook. The approach: wake up every day, talk to partners, figure out what customers need and execute. This mindset emphasises responsiveness and pragmatism. Given the rapid pace of change in cloud and AI, large providers cannot wait for general frameworks to emerge. They must iterate, partner, and build in real time.
• “Late” As An Advantage: Thiagarajan observes that arriving in cloud later gave Oracle the ability to learn from first movers’ mistakes and benefit from newer hardware generations without legacy baggage. While first movers often carry large legacy systems, later entrants can design for new architectures (bare‑metal, custom networking) from the ground up. That doesn’t guarantee success but presents an advantage if leveraged.

The Big Quote: “You earn trust with [partners] by getting their products out to market fast into the hands of the customers, because that really translates to them, the end customer, being happy."

More from Mahesh Thiagarajan and Oracle:

Connect with Mahesh Thiagarajan on LinkedIn or take a look at his Oracle blog posts.

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