The case for OCI: Better Performance, Built-in AI, and Lower Costs

1. Superior Economics and Performance for Oracle Workloads

If your legacy application relies on an Oracle Database, OCI provides architectural and licensing advantages that AWS and Azure simply cannot match.

• Oracle RAC (Real Application Clusters):
  Many mission-critical legacy applications depend on Oracle RAC for high availability. OCI is the only major cloud that supports Oracle RAC natively. On AWS and Azure, RAC requires complex workarounds or third-party virtualization layers, which increases support complexity and risk.

• Licensing Costs (BYOL):
  Oracle’s Bring Your Own License model is far more favorable on OCI. AWS and Azure apply core-factor licensing rules that effectively double the cost by treating vCPUs as physical cores. OCI’s 1:1 OCPU licensing avoids this penalty and results in substantial savings.

• Performance:
  OCI uses “off-box virtualization,” meaning virtualization overhead is handled by a dedicated hardware card instead of consuming CPU resources. This delivers performance that closely mirrors on-premise hardware — critical for latency-sensitive legacy monoliths.
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2. “AI-to-Data” Proximity: RAG and Vector Search Integration

The biggest challenge in adding Generative AI to a legacy application is giving the AI access to the proprietary data stored in the application’s database. OCI offers a unique advantage by bringing the AI capabilities directly to the database layer.

• Integrated Vector Search in Oracle Database 23ai:
  Most legacy enterprise applications run on Oracle Databases. OCI allows you to upgrade to Oracle Database 23ai, which includes AI Vector Search directly in the database engine. This eliminates the need to extract, transform, and move data into a separate vector store (such as Pinecone or other AWS/Azure services) to support Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG).
  

• Data Sovereignty and Latency:
  When AI models operate where the data already lives, you avoid the security risks, complexity, and network latency that come with moving sensitive legacy data across cloud boundaries.
  

• Select AI:
  OCI’s Select AI feature allows legacy applications to interact with their database using natural language. You can add a “Ask questions about this data” capability to a 20-year-old ERP system simply by pointing an OCI Generative AI service at the existing schema — without rewriting application logic.
  
  

On AWS or Azure, achieving the same capability requires multiple disconnected services (e.g., Azure SQL + Azure AI Search + OpenAI), creating a more complex architecture.

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3. Aggressive Pricing on Outbound Data Transfer (Egress)‍

Legacy applications are often data-intensive and frequently integrate with systems that remain on-premise.

• The Hidden Cost of Cloud:
  One of the biggest surprises for organizations moving legacy workloads to AWS or Azure is the cost of data egress (traffic leaving the cloud). Both providers typically charge significant per-GB fees, which can add up quickly.
  

• OCI’s Pricing Model:
  OCI offers dramatically lower egress rates, along with generous monthly free allowances (often the first 10 TB per month, depending on region).
  

• Hybrid Viability:
  For legacy applications that generate large reports for on-premise users or feed data into local warehouses, these savings can reach tens of thousands of dollars annually. Lower egress costs make hybrid architectures — cloud-hosted application, on-premise users — far more financially practical.

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We monitor, maintain, and continuously improve your environment with 24/7 oversight, incident response, performance tuning, and cost management. Your cloud stays secure, optimized, and aligned with best practices — without adding work for your team.

ERP-One helps you get the most from your OCI investment. Ready to explore what your cloud can really do?

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