Intel and Oracle are to partner to offer enhanced cloud-based data centre technologies and hardware, the companies announced in the opening keynote Sunday at this year's annual Oracle OpenWorld event.

Enterprise data centres are undergoing a "tremendous transition" as new technologies are introduced to help companies struggling to make sense of a growing amount of data coming from sensors, metres, and customers, said Intel chief executive officer Brian Krzanich in the event's first keynote.

“This is one of the most innovative periods in data centre technology that I’ve ever seen,” he said. New developments offered a “great opportunity for those who grab [IT].”

However, he acknowledged that despite a range of benefits, the transition to the cloud is taking a long time because enterprises feel it is too difficult to risk dramatic changes.

“We need to make it easy to adopt cloud technology,” he said, noting the cloud platform also needed to perform well, be compelling to companies, and keep data secure.

Mr Krzanich and Oracle chief executive Mark Hurd announced the two companies had quietly set up a joint effort called Project Apollo several months ago, bringing together engineers from both companies to optimise Oracle hardware running Intel chips and memory.

This would enable them to develop hardware and fine tune software for large data centres inside “a scaled version of Oracle’s cloud infrastructure,” according to Mr Krzanich.

The companies have used Project Apollo to build “blueprint” documents that detail new data centre architectures, to enable customers to transition to the cloud as easily and quickly as possible.

Oracle's Hurd told the audience that the two companies would also join to take on a mutual competitor, IBM, and its cloud offerings. He announced a new programme called Exa Your Power (after Oracle's Exa-line of products).

For customers that qualify, Oracle and Intel “will do a free proof-of-concept for a simple database migration from IBM to Oracle/Intel,” Mr Hurd said.