Cloudflare teams with Oracle for secure AI workloads in multicloud

Cloudflare has announced a partnership with Oracle to offer its connectivity cloud platform natively on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), providing customers with a unified and secure platform for applications and artificial intelligence workloads across hybrid and multicloud environments.

A recent Forrester Research report revealed that 73% of enterprise networking infrastructure and telecommunications decision-makers are adopting multicloud networking, a trend attributed to the flexibility of combining features from different cloud providers. However, managing and securing such environments often demands complex, resource-intensive, and manual configurations, a challenge that is heightened as organisations increasingly deploy AI-based applications and workloads.

With the new integration, Cloudflare's connectivity cloud platform will be accessible directly from OCI, allowing joint customers to take advantage of its security, performance, and resiliency for applications hosted on OCI as well as across hybrid and multicloud setups.

Market context

As enterprises become more reliant on cloud-based and AI-driven applications, the complexity of their IT environments continues to grow. The ability to maintain visibility, control, and robust protection across all applications is increasingly viewed as essential for safeguarding critical business operations.

"We all see how AI is transforming the way organisations and their employees operate, and we need to pay equal attention to how AI is expanding our threat landscapes," said Tom Evans, Chief Partner Officer at Cloudflare. "Organisations need a comprehensive platform that delivers flexibility, performance, and security. Our integration with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure will help ensure businesses everywhere, across any cloud environment, can run their workloads on a unified platform with security and speed at the forefront."

Echoing these sentiments, Oracle executives underlined their focus on providing customers with secure and scalable environments, especially as the adoption of AI intensifies.

"At Oracle, we are committed to helping our customers run their most critical workloads securely, reliably, and at scale," said David Hicks, Group Vice President, ISV Ecosystem, Oracle North America. "Through our partnership with Cloudflare, we will enable organisations to protect cloud and AI workloads while enhancing resilience and performance across hybrid and multicloud environments. Together, we will give businesses the confidence to innovate and grow, knowing their applications and data are protected every step of the way."

Service features

Cloudflare runs a large and interconnected global network, offering internet security, speed and reliability for a broad range of clients. With the OCI integration, customers can access a suite of features designed to meet the demands of modern enterprise IT environments:

• Acceleration of public-facing applications and AI inference, reducing latency at scale by leveraging industry performance standards.
• Enhanced protection for AI workloads through the use of DDoS mitigation, web application firewall (WAF), bot mitigation, and Zero Trust controls.
• Unified traffic orchestration and security across hybrid and multi-cloud architectures.
• API security, including rate limiting, threat intelligence and data protection for entire vendor ecosystems.
• Compliance support for globally distributed enterprises via a security-first cloud platform.

Industry implications

The integration is positioned as a solution for enterprises seeking to address the additional management and security challenges posed by the rapid expansion of AI workloads in multicloud environments. Cloudflare and Oracle cite the ability to offer joint clients improved application performance, innovation potential, and consistent compliance with industry requirements.

The organisations indicate that customers from diverse industries-including startups, established enterprises, and government agencies-may see benefits in terms of secured applications, centralised control, and streamlined operations when orchestrating workloads and data across multiple cloud and on-premises locations.

Customer impact

According to both companies, the collaboration provides a pathway for enterprises to reduce complexity in their IT environments while maintaining a heightened level of security and compliance. Joint customers are expected to benefit from the ability to accelerate and protect digital initiatives, particularly as AI becomes more pervasive.