Covington Advises Microsoft in Cloud Partnership with Oracle

Covington Advises Microsoft in Cloud Partnership with Oracle

6/27/2013

SAN FRANCISCO, June 27, 2013 — Covington & Burling advised Microsoft Corp. in negotiating a partnership with Oracle Corp. that will enable customers to run Oracle software on Microsoft’s private and public cloud-based platforms. The transaction involved a number of agreements documenting the licensing, product development, support and cooperation aspects of the deal.

Under the agreements, customers will be able to run Oracle software — including Java, Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server — in a virtualized environment on Windows Server Hyper-V and in Windows Azure and receive full certification and support from Oracle.

The agreement allows existing Oracle customers to “bring their own” Oracle licenses if they migrate their current on-premises use of Oracle products onto the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. It will also allow Microsoft to offer “license included” options for Azure customers that want to make new uses of Oracle products on Azure, under terms to be described in future announcements. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“Now our customers will be able to take advantage of the flexibility our unique hybrid cloud solutions offer for their Oracle applications, middleware and databases, just like they have been able to do on Windows Server for years,” said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

Evan Cox was the lead outside counsel on the deal for Microsoft.