Analyst Perspectives

ISG Software Research’s expertise examines the software provider landscape through two lenses: business applications (including office of finance, human capital management (HCM) and customer experience) and IT and technology (including digital business, digital technology, artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics and data). Most software providers fall into one of these two high-level expertise areas. One of the reasons that agentic AI is so potentially impactful on the software sector is that it has the potential to revolutionize all these areas of focus. As such, software providers that address both business applications and IT and technology, such as Oracle, have reason to believe that they are in an advantageous position that will enable them to both deliver and derive significant benefits from agentic AI.

Founded in 1977, Oracle was a dominant force in the early years of database management systems before expanding its focus through a combination of research and development and acquisitions to address applications and infrastructure, both on-premises and in the cloud. The company is now one of the largest technology providers on the planet, generating revenue of $57 billion in its fiscal year 2025. Oracle products were assessed in 60 different ISG Buyers Guides in 2024, and it has been rated as Exemplary in numerous Buyers Guides already in 2025, including AI Platforms, Customer Experience Management, HCM Platforms, Real-Time Data, Sales and Operations Planning and Workforce Management Suites. While these software segments are diverse and experience their own technology and industry trends, one thing they have in common is the coming impact of agentic AI. ISG Research defines agentic AI as software designed to execute business processes through autonomous actions, potentially controlling multiple processes and systems through the orchestration of one or more AI or algorithmically determined rules-based models, based on an understanding of the environment and the goals that should be achieved. Adoption of agentic AI is nascent, but it has the potential to significantly impact all areas of the software landscape. As my colleague David Menninger asserts, through 2027, 4 in 5 AI software providers will add agentic capabilities, enabling automation and streamlining operations. While agentic AI will impact providers of business applications and IT and technology, Oracle is well-placed to derive significant benefit from agentic AI as a provider that spans these two market segments. Its efforts have been validated in the ISG Buyers Guide for Agentic and Generative AI where it was rated Exemplary and Overall Leader.

The scope of Oracle’s ambitions in relation to agentic AI is illustrated by recent analyst perspectives written by my colleagues from across the ISG Software Research team. David Menninger discussed the company’s intention to address the underlying data platform requirements for AI, while Matthew Brown, Stephen Hurrell and Robert Kugel discussed Oracle’s agentic AI plans in relation to HCM, business applications and finance, respectively. Each of the latter three perspectives touched on Oracle AI Agent Studio for Fusion Applications, but it is worth taking a closer look at the platform for developing and managing AI agents, as well as placing it in the context of the company’s overall data and AI strategy.

Oracle AI Agent Studio was launched at Oracle Cloud World London in March and is designed to enable users to create, deploy and manage AI agents, as well as modify the more than 50 agents already delivered within Oracle Fusion Applications. AI Agent Studio provides an environment for customizing those Oracle-built agents, with the ability for users and partners to add documents, tools, prompts or APIs relevant to their individual industry or business requirements, as well as prebuilt templates for users to create their own agents. Customers and partners can take advantage of multiple large language models (LLMs), including those pre-approved by Oracle and provided by the likes of Cohere and Meta, as well as industry-specific LLMs. Oracle AI Agent Studio also provides capabilities for orchestrating teams of multiple agents to address more complex business processes, including the ability to add checkpoints and approvals to address multi-step processes.

Beyond Oracle Fusion Applications, Oracle also recently made a series of announcements strengthening its relationship with NVIDIA to enhance the development and operationalization of AI applications, including integration between Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform. The relationship means that NVIDIA’s AI tools and NIM inference microservices are available through the OCI Console to accelerate the development of applications and agents. The relationship also extended to Oracle Distributed Cloud, enabling the development of AI applications that can take advantage of on-premises and sovereign cloud resources. Our research shows that more than one-half of enterprises (59%) deploy most of their analytics and AI workloads in the cloud, but a substantial portion is deployed on-premises.

Oracle’s software is so ubiquitous that it is almost impossible that agentic applications will not interact with Oracle data, AI or application software. Currently Oracle offers two separate approaches to agentic AI, with OCI AI Agent Platform providing capabilities for building, deploying and managing AI agents generally, and Oracle AI Agent Studio providing an environment for extending and developing agents for customers invested in Oracle Fusion Applications. While there may be two different end user camps for these offerings, there is also the potential for closer integration. Either way, I recommend that enterprises assessing requirements for agentic AI include Oracle in their evaluations.

Regards,

Matt Aslett