Oracle Corp. is adding a new private database service option called Autonomous Database Dedicated for customers that can’t run their most critical workloads on its public cloud infrastructure platform.

The company said the new service announced today is designed for enterprises that have “high security or operational policy requirements” but would like to benefit from its cloud database management services.

The Oracle Autonomous Database is a cloud-based technology that helps to automate many of the routine tasks required to manage Oracle databases. Introduced in 2017, the service combines Oracle’s Database 18c software with a set of automated administration services powered by machine learning algorithms. The combination is offered as a cloud service called the Oracle Autonomous Database Cloud, which Oracle describes as “self-driving, self-securing and self-repairing.”

What the new service does is enable companies to run an isolated and private version of the Oracle Autonomous Database on Oracle’s dedicated Exadata infrastructure, which was updated earlier this month. Oracle Autonomous Database Dedicated bolsters security with the inclusion of custom operations policies and controls over provisioning, updates and availability, the company said.

Autonomous Database Dedicated automatically takes care of database infrastructure issues such as hardware provisioning, configuration, security and software installation. It also draws on machine learning to detect patterns and anomalies that could indicate security threats, help with database management and predict hardware stack failure in data centers.

Juan Loaiza, executive vice president of Mission-Critical Database Technologies at Oracle, said the new service is meant to eliminate concerns some enterprises may have over security and isolation when they move critical workloads to the cloud.

“Autonomous Database Dedicated enables customers to easily transform from manually managed independent databases on-premises, to a fully autonomous and isolated private database cloud within the Oracle Public Cloud,” he said.

The service is just the second deployment option for Oracle’s Autonomous Database, following the introduction of serverless deployments on the Oracle public cloud when it was launched in 2017.

“Customers value the information they store in their Oracle databases, and as such they have some reasonable and not so reasonable concerns about storing their data into the public cloud,” said Holger Mueller, principal analyst and vice president of Constellation Research Inc. “The dedicated option for Oracle Autonomous Database addresses these concerns and gives users another option, not only to move to the autonomous versions of the Oracle database, but also to move to the public cloud on dedicated hardware, while benefiting from Oracle’s managed services.”

The new version of Oracle’s Autonomous Database comes at a time when the company is seeing more customers take the service for a spin. In its most recent earnings call, the company said 5,000 customers were testing the service, up from 4,000 in the prior quarter.

Photo: Håkan Dahlström/Flickr