It’s long been acknowledged that information is power, but the cloud combined with AI offers organisations – in particular the enterprise – more opportunity than before to really extract value and drive success.

Indeed, by 2025 all cloud apps will incorporate AI in one form or another.

So claims Oracle CEO Mark Hurd who used his keynote session at the firm’s OpenWorld conference in San Francisco this week to highlight myriad of benefits on offer when the two are combined.

Proclaiming that “Cyber teams are the new future,” Hurd added “As cloud and integrated technologies like AI [evolve] information becomes incrementally more valuable.”

Hurd stressed to delegates that cloud was now a foundational aspect of business; something “irrefutable.” What’s more, Hurd also believes spicing up the cloud mix with additional ingredients such as AI will only serve to help accelerate the pace at which organisations embrace what cloud has to offer.

“The cloud market is accelerating, it’s moving faster than predicted. Just last year alone 15% of US corporate owned data centres shut down. If you run that out and it was linear, the prediction I made of [it happening by] 2025, would be off by three or four years,” Hurd said.

“Cloud is accelerating and those datacentres are shifting from companies to core cloud providers. [But] we don’t see AI as an individual solution. There are many vendors that do. We see AI as a core feature that will get embedded into every solution, every application.”

Hurd added that the advent of AI brought with it enhanced productivity and innovation potential, reducing the time it takes humans to do certain tasks today or simply being able to do things humans just cannot fathom.

“Customers are [already] using cloud and now you’re going to see a new era as we integrate AI,” Hurd added.