Can Oracle's Expanding Cloud Deal With AWS Fuel Long-Term Growth?

Oracle's ORCL strategic expansion of its cloud partnership with Amazon AMZN-owned Amazon Web Services (“AWS”) appears positioned to drive sustained growth, particularly through enhanced security integrations that address enterprise compliance demands. The company's latest AWS Key Management Service integration for Exadata Database Service on Oracle Database@AWS represents a significant advancement in unified key management capabilities.

The December 2025 announcement enables customers to centrally manage Transparent Data Encryption master keys through AWS KMS, offering flexibility between standard key stores and CloudHSM options. This integration complements Oracle's existing key management solutions — Oracle Wallet, OCI Vault, and Oracle Key Vault — providing enterprises with comprehensive security choices aligned with their operational requirements.

This development strengthens Oracle's competitive positioning in the hybrid cloud market by simplifying database encryption management while maintaining security separation between database administrators and encryption keys. The PKCS#11 cryptographic interface creates seamless interoperability between Oracle's database infrastructure and AWS' native key management system, eliminating complex reconfiguration processes when migrating existing databases.

Oracle's fiscal first-quarter 2026 results demonstrated robust cloud infrastructure momentum, with remaining performance obligations reaching record levels. The AWS partnership expansion directly supports this trajectory by removing technical barriers for enterprises seeking to leverage both platforms simultaneously.

The unified key management approach addresses critical enterprise pain points around compliance, data residency requirements, and operational complexity. By enabling customers to apply consistent security policies across both Oracle databases and AWS-hosted applications, this integration reduces administrative overhead while strengthening security postures.

As enterprises increasingly adopt multi-cloud strategies, Oracle's deepening AWS collaboration positions the company to capture growing demand for interoperable cloud database solutions that maintain stringent security standards without sacrificing operational efficiency.

Cloud Database Key Management Landscape

Amazon and Microsoft MSFT maintain distinct approaches to database encryption key management within their cloud ecosystems. Amazon Web Services offers native integration through AWS KMS for its Aurora and RDS database services, supporting both AWS-managed and customer-managed encryption keys with CloudHSM capabilities. Microsoft Azure provides similar functionality through Azure Key Vault for Azure SQL Database and Cosmos DB, enabling centralized key management with dedicated HSM options. Amazon's KMS processes billions of API requests daily across its infrastructure, while Microsoft Azure Key Vault serves enterprises across 60-plus global regions. Both Amazon and Microsoft continue expanding their encryption management capabilities, though implementation approaches differ based on their respective cloud architectures and customer compliance requirements.

ORCL’s Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates

Shares of Oracle have returned 18.8% in the past six-month period compared with the Zacks Computer and Technology sector’s appreciation of 27.1% and the Zacks Computer - Software industry’s growth of 1.6%.

ORCL’s 6-Month Price Performance

From a valuation standpoint, ORCL stock is currently trading at a premium with a forward 12-month Price/Sales ratio of 7.63x, which is higher than the industry average of 7.53x. Oracle carries a Value Score of D.

ORCL’s Valuation

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for ORCL’s fiscal 2026 earnings is pegged at $6.81 per share, marking an upward revision of 1 cent over the past 30 days. The earnings figure suggests 12.94% growth over the figure reported in fiscal 2025.

Oracle Corporation Price and Consensus

Oracle Corporation price-consensus-chart | Oracle Corporation Quote

ORCL stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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