Oracle, AT&T Try to Push 5G Forward with Cloud, IoT Partnership

In what appears to be a throwback to the themes of Mobile World Congress in early 2023, Oracle and AT&T are partnering to try to fulfill the promise of 5G connectivity.

The move reflects what Channel Futures reported in February of last year: “As the world’s largest hyperscaler providers expand partnerships with telco and mobility providers, analysts say 5G is underdelivering on its hype.”

That is to say, 5G has yet to stomp on 4G’s capabilities and stand out as the end-all-be-all of high-speed cellular connectivity. Even so, IoT often is positioned as a prime use case for 5G networks, and, as such, it’s little surprise that the new Oracle and AT&T deal centers on IoT.

How Oracle and AT&T Hope to Change the 5G Conversation with IoT 

To that point, Oracle will bring AT&T’s IoT connectivity and network APIs into its Enterprise Communications Platform. That’s Oracle’s industry cloud; industry cloud solutions target specific sectors − think finance, health care, retail and more − and bring the requisite, unique compliance and governance safeguards to the table. The Oracle and AT&T pairing will, the companies say, allow Oracle’s industry cloud users to connect and manage their IoT devices on AT&T’s network, through a single interface.

For Oracle channel partners, which are mostly behemoth managed service providers, system integrators and the like, the AT&T arrangement looks promising from the perspective of IoT provisioning in the cloud. While not a directly channel-centric play by any means, the Oracle and AT&T collaboration appears to fulfill some niche needs of IoT end users (large enterprises, global organizations).

Related:Oracle’s AI Strategy Now Spanning Apps, Services, Infrastructure

Here’s what Oracle Enterprise Communications Platform now features, with AT&T’s IoT services in the mix: IoT connectivity and near real-time communications to Oracle's industry cloud applications. Thanks to integrated capabilities such as IoT edge application management, the solution contains an all-in-one offering. That means users don’t have to oversee complex integrations or network contracts. 

Oracle says the integration with AT&T IoT connectivity and network APIs is available across Oracle Cloud Infrastructure regions in the United States. The Larry Ellison-founded provider, now widely viewed as the fourth-largest hyperscaler, said its platform, combined with AT&T’s connectivity, aims to deliver on use cases such as automating utility grid management or enriching telehealth capabilities (though how, regarding the latter, is not exactly clear).

AT&T's Sarita Rao

"AT&T is committed to empowering our ecosystem partners to build solutions that integrate AT&T programmable connectivity, whether using our IoT API's or our emerging network APIs, ”Sarita Rao, senior vice president of AT&T Partner Solutions, said about the Oracle announcement. "By teaming with Oracle to incorporate IoT connectivity and programmable APIs into Oracle industry applications, we are providing businesses and organizations a tighter level of integration between the network and application, driving performance and reliability gains while also eliminating integration requirements and separate contracting events. It's co-creation at its best.”

Related:Abundant IoT, Advisors Tackle the eIoT Opportunity

Will the Oracle and AT&T Deal Fulfill 5G’s Hype?

Still, partners might wonder whether the Oracle and AT&T IoT pairing will help 5G to fulfill its own marketing promises. Here’s what research firm Omdia’s Pablo Tomasi told Light Reading (a sister website to Channel Futures) last year, namely about private 5G networks for verticals: “I think we are at the turning point where we need to move from hype into, ‘OK, this may not be such a gigantic opportunity, but it’s still a good opportunity that is growing at a rational speed.’”

The Oracle and AT&T agreement comes a couple of months after HPE Aruba launched a product for deploying and managing private 5G networks. HPE Aruba is, like Oracle, eyeing telcos as customers for the platform.