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  • Oracle marks 50 years 🌐📈|Amazon’s AWS booms 🚀|Standardized data warehouse 🌥️|Networking when Working as a Database Pro

Oracle marks 50 years 🌐📈|Amazon’s AWS booms 🚀|Standardized data warehouse 🌥️|Networking when Working as a Database Pro

Keep your friends close and don't worry about your enemies

Author

Gladstone Benjamin
September 22, 2025

What’s in today’s newsletter:

Also, check out the the weekly Deep Dive - Networking when Working as a Database Pro, and Everything Else in Cloud Databases.

Voice AI Security That Impacts Your Bottom Line

Learn how enterprise IT and ops leaders are using compliance to unlock Voice AI scale—deploying faster, reducing risk, and accelerating procurement.

This guide shows why HIPAA, GDPR, and SOC 2 are now deal-makers, not blockers. From securing PHI to routing across 100+ sites, see how security-first platforms reduce friction and enable real-world rollout across healthcare, insurance, and more.

OCI

TL;DR: Oracle, now 50 years old, is reinventing itself with a focus on AI and cloud infrastructure, landing massive OpenAI deals and exploring a TikTok U.S. partnership to remain competitive and relevant in a fast-evolving tech world.

  • Founded in 1977, Oracle built its reputation on relational database systems and remains a key enterprise software player.

  • The company is now leaning heavily into cloud infrastructure, providing AI-ready data center capacity.

  • It recently signed a ~$300 billion multiyear deal with OpenAI to power its models, signaling renewed relevance.

  • Oracle is also part of a consortium vying to manage TikTok’s U.S. operations, positioning itself in the social media and regulatory arena.

  • Founder Larry Ellison’s net worth surged, briefly making him the world’s richest person, highlighting investor confidence.

Why this matters: Oracle’s comeback shows how legacy tech giants can stay relevant by pivoting to high-growth sectors like AI and cloud. Its aggressive strategy combines infrastructure dominance, strategic partnerships, and geopolitical moves, illustrating how older firms can shape the next wave of technology innovation rather than be disrupted by it.

AWS

TL;DR: Amazon faces retail struggles amid weak consumer demand, but strong AWS growth driven by cloud adoption boosts valuation, making its future rely on balancing investments between these contrasting divisions.

  • Amazon's retail segment struggles due to weakened consumer demand and inventory management challenges.

  • AWS experiences significant revenue and profit growth fueled by increased enterprise cloud adoption.

  • The cloud division's success underpins Amazon’s valuation amid retail market softness and economic uncertainties.

  • Amazon’s future depends on balancing investment and resource allocation between retail pressures and AWS expansion.

Why this matters: Amazon’s strong AWS growth shields it from retail struggles, sustaining its valuation and strategic options. This balance between cloud expansion and retail softness exemplifies how tech giants must pivot toward high-growth sectors like cloud computing to remain resilient amid shifting consumer and economic landscapes.

DATA WAREHOUSE

TL;DR: The guide details data warehouse layers, types, and lifecycle stages, emphasizing standardized design for scalable, high-quality data storage that enhances analytics, reduces downtime, and supports informed business decisions.

  • The article explains core data warehouse layers: staging for raw data, integration for consolidation, and access for users.

  • It discusses three warehouse types: enterprise data warehouses, data marts, and virtual warehouses for varied needs.

  • The data warehouse lifecycle includes stages from requirements gathering to maintenance with best practice highlights.

  • Standardized designs improve scalability, data quality, reduce downtime, and support better analytics and strategic decisions.

Why this matters: Understanding core data warehouse design standards enables organizations to build scalable, high-quality systems that streamline data processing and enhance analytics. This leads to improved decision-making, operational efficiency, and competitive advantage by ensuring data integrity, adaptability, and seamless integration across evolving business needs.

GRAPH DATABASE

TL;DR: AllegroGraph, a semantic graph database by Franz Inc., was named a 2025 Trend-Setting Product by KMWorld for advancing complex data management, AI, and real-time analytics across key industries.

  • AllegroGraph by Franz Inc. was named a 2025 Trend-Setting Product by KMWorld for innovative knowledge management.

  • It uses semantic graph technology to manage complex data relationships across industries like healthcare and finance.

  • AllegroGraph supports AI, knowledge graphs, and real-time analytics, enhancing decision-making with interconnected data insights.

  • The recognition boosts its market position, encouraging broader adoption and advancing next-generation data analytics solutions.

Why this matters: AllegroGraph’s recognition as a Trend-Setting Product validates its cutting-edge semantic graph technology, crucial for managing complex datasets across key industries. This enhances AI-driven insights and real-time analytics, accelerating innovation in knowledge management and setting new standards for enterprise data solutions.

TL;DR: Integrating Large Language Models with graph databases enables natural language queries, enriches knowledge graphs from unstructured text, and democratizes complex data access, revolutionizing dynamic data interaction and insights.

  • Large Language Models (LLMs) combined with graph databases enhance data retrieval and reasoning capabilities.

  • LLMs generate natural language queries that translate into graph database operations for easier data exploration.

  • The integration helps construct knowledge graphs by extracting entities and relationships from unstructured text.

  • This approach democratizes access to complex data, enabling more intuitive and dynamic knowledge management.

Why this matters: Integrating LLMs with graph databases transforms complex data interaction by enabling natural language queries and richer knowledge graphs, lowering barriers for users. This fusion enhances insights and innovation across sectors like healthcare and finance, driving more accessible, dynamic, and accurate data-driven decision-making.

EVERYTHING ELSE IN CLOUD DATABASES

  • Databricks cofounder urges data governance for AI success

  • Snowflake Tops Fortune's Future 50 List 2025

  • Explore SQL Server Temporal Tables for Time Travel Data

  • Dnotitia Launches VDPU IP for Vector Database Boost

  • Scaling Databases for Massive Multi-Tenant Apps

  • Delta, Iceberg, Hudi optimize modern data lakehouses

  • Microsoft Fabric adds Graph, Maps, OneLake updates

  • Workday to buy AI firm Sana for $1.1B

  • Indicium Gains Strategic Investment from Databricks Ventures

  • Vector DBs Power Eric Malley's AI Success Revolution

DEEP DIVE
Networking when Working as a Database Pro

I just got word late last night that the cull I always anticipated at my old workplace, even before I left there nearly 3 years ago, happened.

Everyone from my immediate team got the axe, even my brother-in-arms. (They used to call us "the troublemakers.") He was let go.

We were texting each other last night. We will meet up next week, where I am going to lend a hand as to what is on the horizon in the database technology sphere.

I have myriad technologies that I watch weekly. And when I say myriad, that translates to hundreds:

A subset of the groupings of stuff I keep track of

The image above is just a small set of groupings, and each grouping has automations for a particular technology, platform, or service that I cover in this newsletter.

Some of those various technologies are what are going to discuss.

As for the networking part of this week’s deep dive, I suggest you never act as a lone wolf. The time always comes in the tech world where companies get bought and sold, management and owners make silly mistakes within their market, and the people that usually have to pivot rapidly are folks like you and me.

You never know who could lend a hand when you need new employment, or when you even need to get started in an IT career. In fact, my second and third jobs in IT were secured through a friend I grew up with, that I actually reported to in said third job.

Never let your pride get in the way of an impending mortgage payment, or a grumbling belly.

Periodically reach out to old workmates with whom you have good relations with. Talk to recruiters whom you have worked with in the past. As a matter of fact, I keep in contact with the one that helped place me at my current employer. He calls me or I call him, perhaps every nine months or so, just to get a pulse on what is happening

I don’t have to say it, but the job market is not like the past. You almost have to think like an entrepreneur, even to a Machiavellian extreme, even though you work in a corporate setting.

What I am really trying to say is look out for yourself, but don’t always look inward. Reach out to your network if you want to, or need to find new employment.

And also read this newsletter for unparalleled cloud database news.

Gladstone Benjamin