In an exclusive conversation with Express Computer, Oracle’s Senior Vice President, High Availability Technologies, Wei Hu, shares how the company is shaping the future of always-on, hyper-scalable, and data-resident databases in an era where digital transactions, AI-driven decision-making, and regulatory compliance converge.
“Our goal is to create an always-on, auto-scaling, serverless architecture that is powerful, easy to use, and cost efficient. This means enterprises can meet stringent data residency laws, handle petabyte-scale AI analytics, and maintain business continuity—even during failures—without rewriting their applications,” says Wei Hu.
Since 2017, Oracle’s native distributed database technology has powered mission-critical workloads across industries—from mobile messaging and credit card fraud detection to personalised marketing and smart power meters. The platform’s unique advantage lies in its ability to meet local data residency requirements without sacrificing global operational efficiency.
For example, in India—where the Reserve Bank mandates that payment data for Indian citizens must be stored within the country—Oracle worked with a major U.S. bank to create a distributed setup where India-specific data is stored in two Indian data centres, while the rest of the world’s data remains in the U.S. All of this still appears as a single database to the application layer, eliminating the need to replicate hundreds of microservices in every jurisdiction.
Hu also highlights the growing relevance of distributed databases for agentic AI workloads—systems where AI agents autonomously browse, transact, and process data at scales far beyond human activity. These workloads are highly variable, requiring a backend that can scale up during spikes and scale down when demand drops, all the while complying with local storage laws.
By combining distributed database capabilities with Oracle Globally Distributed Exadata Database —a serverless, pay-as-you-go database cloud service—customers can start small, expand as demand grows, and handle peak loads such as Diwali or Christmas shopping without permanent over-provisioning.
“We are the only full-featured, enterprise-grade distributed database that supports full SQL, all workloads, and multiple distribution methods—including by country. That’s why we can meet compliance, deliver extreme availability, and support AI workloads at hyper scale—all in a single platform,” he explains.
As more countries adopt data sovereignty regulations and AI systems create unprecedented backend demands, Oracle’s Globally Distributed Exadata Database positions itself not just as a compliance solution, but as a future-proof data infrastructure for global enterprises.