We May Have Been Late, But Our AI Stack Lets CIOs Leapfrog Legacy Systems

Premalakshmi PR, Vice President, Technology Cloud, Oracle India in conversation with CIO&Leader highlights AI strategy for modern enterprises.

- Jatinder Singh

ORACLE ADMITS it entered the cloud AI race later than some competitors, yet underscores how its engineering strengths, high-performance infrastructure, and integrated AI innovations now enable enterprises to leapfrog legacy limitations and accelerate smarter, faster, AI-driven outcomes.

Oracle has announced several significant innovations aimed at redefining data, cloud, and AI strategy for modern enterprises.

Fresh from Oracle AI World, Premalakshmi PR, Vice President, Technology Cloud, Oracle India shares exclusive insights with CIO&Leader on the company's latest announcements, from the AI-native Oracle Database 26ai and the new AI Data Platform to the Zettascale10 supercluster, AI Factory, and Oracle's expanding multi-cloud partnerships.

In this conversation with Jatinder Singh, Editor, CIO&Leader, she discusses what these developments mean for India and APAC, how Oracle is addressing enterprise AI challenges and infrastructure readiness, industry-wise adoption trends, and how CIOs should prepare for the next era of AI-native leadership.

CIO&Leader: Oracle is known for its legacy in databases and ERP, but in cloud AI, hyperscalers like AWS, Azure, and Google lead the way. How is Oracle changing that perception and proving it can compete at the same scale to win customer trust?

PREMALAKSHMI PR: Absolutely, Jatinder. Even if we were the last to enter, we are the latest in terms of technology. We bring all the latest innovations, informed by a decade of learnings from the market and industry. That's what differentiates OCI, delivering superior price-performance, enhanced security, and innovation at scale.

By embedding AI directly into the database layer, at no additional cost, where the intelligence actually lives, we eliminate latency, avoid costly data movement, and enhance advanced analytics. Today, the Oracle Database is truly AI-native.