Many of us checked to make sure it wasn’t April Fools Day a couple of years ago when Microsoft announced that SQL Server 2017 would run on Linux. This means that some shops who want to run SQL Server, but not Windows Server, now can. But it also means that SQL Server professionals need to either dust off their Bash scripting skills or develop them in the first place.

We were shocked once more last year when Microsoft purchased GitHub. Personally, I wondered if the diehard anti-Microsoft crowd would quickly move to some other platform, but it hasn’t happened. This acquisition helps Microsoft become a real leader in DevOps.

After all that, you would think that everyone would be prepared for the latest news. Recently, Microsoft announced a cloud interoperability partnership with Oracle! The two companies compete in many ways, but the rivalry in database platforms made the news especially shocking to SQL Server database professionals, many of whom have always seen Oracle as “the enemy.” Of course, some of us who have built careers by focusing on SQL Server have worked with Oracle databases, too, even if it’s just migrating data from Oracle into a data warehouse. Lots of organizations run both Oracle and SQL Server, so refusing to work on other database platforms, even when you specialize in one, could severely limit your career opportunities.

The partnership between Microsoft and Oracle makes sense and benefits both organizations. You can already run many Oracle apps in Azure, but now there is a way to run Oracle applications in Azure connected to its Autonomous Database in Oracle Cloud. It’s also a way for organizations running Oracle applications on premises or in the cloud to easily take advantage of the analytics platform found in Azure. Because of a highly reliable network, single sign on, collaborative support, and license mobility, connecting to both clouds should be seamless for customers. The technology to make this happen is in place in some eastern US data centers, and a handful of organizations are already using it.

This partnership will simplify moving to the cloud, especially for those companies running their businesses on Oracle but wanting to take advantage of analytics and AI services found in Azure. It’s a win for the organizations and their customers, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.