Karissa Breen [00:00:16]:
Welcome to KB On the Go. And today, I’m on the go at Oracle Cloud World Conference in Las Vegas. I’ll be reporting on the ground here at The Venetian Resort. Oracle Cloud World is where customers and partners can see the latest innovations in cloud technology, discover methods for getting the most business value from AI, and explore ways to increase productivity and efficiency through automation. So for today’s bonus interview, I’ve lined up a few Oracle executives, so please stay tuned. Joining me now in person is Steven Bovis, regional managing director at Oracle Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands. So, Steven, thanks for joining, and welcome.

Stephen Bovis [00:00:53]:
Thank you.

Karissa Breen [00:00:54]:
Okay. So let’s let’s get into this. So given your role, you’re relatively new in terms of the Oracle game, because I know there’s a fair few people at Oracle that have been there for quite a while. So you I would say that you’re relatively new, but perhaps walk us through your strategy with Oracle and your role.

Stephen Bovis [00:01:09]:
I I’ve been with Oracle for a little over 18 months. The focus that I’ve had has probably been in 3 areas. Number 1 is really around the customer, and making sure that because of the transformation that’s going on within Oracle, both from an internal perspective, but also from an innovation perspective as it relates to the technology, is the opportunity for us is to reengage the customer and really share in many ways, new things that the customer may have not been aware of that Oracle can do. So it’s been reengaging the customer, talking about, what we can do. So that’s number 1. 2nd part of the strategy is around the people side. So, if I go back before my time with Oracle is that we were very much a product focused company, effectively selling products to the customer. And then what would happen is the customer with, in some cases, a systems implementer will go and implement the product into the customer’s environment.

Stephen Bovis [00:02:12]:
And at that point in time, we would somewhat disengage why that process happened. And if you think about where we’re at today is that the team need to ship because what we’re constantly doing is bringing value to the customer every day because now what we’re providing is cloud services, whether they be software as a service or platform as a service or infrastructure as a service. The customer is getting value, business value from those each and every day that we’re providing that service to the customer. That’s part 1. And then part 2, you would have observed the customer. That’s part 1. And then part 2, you would have observed at Cloud World is that we’re constantly releasing new services and new capabilities within those platforms. So what that also does is gives us, with our customers, an opportunity to be constantly engaging with them, with our customers an opportunity to be constantly engaging with them in terms of introducing them to new services and new technologies.

Stephen Bovis [00:03:08]:
So the cultural piece in terms of that shift with our team is critically important. And then the final area that I’ve been focused on is around the partner community. So exactly the same with the partner community as our technology has changed considerably over the last few years, is that part of what we need to do is also bring the partner community along with us, in terms of having them, you know, being able to help us go to market in terms of with our customers.

Karissa Breen [00:03:38]:
Okay. So there’s a couple of things in there which is interesting. I’m going to go forward, then I’m going to go back to just a couple of things that you said. So you obviously made a point to meet with as many customers as possible with the intention of listening to them. So the part that I’m curious to understand is would you say historically this hasn’t happened perhaps?

Stephen Bovis [00:03:56]:
Not at all. Not at all. So I think it comes back to what I’ve just spoken to is that we have the opportunity to listen to the customer because the challenges and the opportunities that we have to work with the customers today are probably quite different than what they were back in the past. Coming back to the point that I made around selling a product as opposed to selling a service and selling daily innovation to help them drive value for their businesses.

Karissa Breen [00:04:26]:
Okay. So now I want to focus a little bit more on the customer. So I’m based in Australia. I have previously worked on the customer side, and part of my job is to do reconnaissance, crowdsource questions. And I think a few of the the questions that have been coming up has been around perceived value with Oracle at the moment, specifically to Australia. So you obviously knew you’re trying to change things. Do you have any sort of insight there on that front with what you’re doing?

Stephen Bovis [00:04:50]:
I think, again, that comes back to the point that I’ve raised in terms of going and visiting as many customers as possible. Not only is that something that I’m doing, but also ensuring that our teams are out there doing the same thing is that we have the opportunity because of just the amount of change that’s happening within Oracle from a technology point of view and you’ve seen a lot of that unfold, I would assume since you’ve been here, is that we’ve got that ability to be constantly talking about to the customer in terms of that value that we can be bringing to them because every day we’re bringing out new services and new solutions from a from a technology perspective.

Karissa Breen [00:05:32]:
That part I get. It’s just more so perhaps the historical view of Oracle specific to Australia, has been more on that value piece. Obviously, you guys have had a large input from the database side of things, and I understand the capability with OCI and also the the convergence between leveraging both capabilities. It’s just more so before coming here, going and asking specific people in the industry that I’ve worked with quite closely over the last 12, 15 years, that was just some of the the commentary. So I think having this opportunity to speak, you know, speak to you today and hear your point of view, I think, would perhaps change that perception a little bit. Obviously, it’s not something that I’ve noticed here a lot in North America, but I have noticed that in Australia.

Stephen Bovis [00:06:14]:
We’ve got a customer base out there, which is on what I would consider to be, you know, more traditional, older style Oracle technologies, then the opportunity for us then is to reengage that customer and talk about the latest technologies that we have. So, sometimes people will say, hey, we’re late to the cloud market. And I would argue, but how can you be late to anything with technology changing so constantly? So, if you look at what our value proposition is around OCI as an example, in terms of giving customers a very different cloud model than what they’re traditionally used to because the technology is so much newer, then that is where we then start to unlock different forms of value for the customer. And whether that be in terms of being able to perform better, provide better security, being able to approach the customer with different models, everything from, as I said, all of our application suite, whether that be horizontal applications or whether that be specific applications for industries where we’ve got, I think it’s something like 13, 14 different industries where we’ve got specific applications for, all of that being underpinned by that same cloud platform.

Karissa Breen [00:07:34]:
Do you think as well that, obviously, I’ve interviewed many of your executives, including Jay Evans, you know, Chris Chilayo, who spoke quite extensively when I was in Singapore with CloudWorld. Do you think there’s just this perception because Oracle is 47 years old? Do you think it’s like there’s this this view of Oracle that perhaps people still have entrenched in their mind? And, obviously, in terms of cloud capability, you guys offer a lot, and I think that’s probably not as apparent in the market. So that’s what I’m trying to understand a little bit more about is this this perception that people have around Oracle being, you know, how it maybe used to be viewed and tended to the database side of things, and now, you know, you guys are doing a lot of innovation. You’re doing a lot of investment into OCI. You’re obviously collaborating with the other cloud and hyperscalers, which makes sense. So is it is it more of a perception thing that things need to change, would you say?

Stephen Bovis [00:08:21]:
Yeah. I’d say so. Yeah. Absolutely. It is a perception thing. You know, it comes back to, you know, what I’ve said there is if if a customer today is familiar with Oracle and they’re just using a database, and let’s say, for example, there’s quite an old version of database, which in some cases we do have customers out there with older versions of database, then their reflection will be of Oracle is that platform that they’re getting value out of today where a lot has changed in that period of time. And so therefore, coming back to my point around engaging customers and spending a lot of time with customers, which is what I’m certainly doing and encouraging our team to do is what it’s doing is giving us the ability to really share a lot around who Oracle is today. And therefore, that is that, probably what you would say, that perception gap as well.

Stephen Bovis [00:09:12]:
And And sometimes that takes a little bit of time within within the customers. You know, we’re we’re definitely seeing that.

Karissa Breen [00:09:17]:
And that’s the point that’s interesting to me. So I started my tech career at Commonwealth Bank, so very familiar with Oracle. So before I started getting more involved with Oracle on media perspective with Aurora and and the others, that was my view of Oracle, which was the old database, old PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and that was my view. And I’m not the only one. And so when I’ve spoken to people in the market, I’m very, very close to the industry of being a practitioner myself, I go and ask people, like, what’s your view? And one of the things that often comes up is people don’t really know about your cloud capability, or they don’t see, like, OCI as the same sort of, you know, new hip cloud capability as perhaps to the others. So that’s the part that I’m really interested in. Obviously, you guys get a lot of money, you’ve done a lot of investment, you’ve been around for a while, makes sense, in terms of your pricing model, is cost effective perhaps if you’re gonna look at that way compared to the other hyperscalers. So for me, it’s just more so, you know, coming here today, it’s giving the opportunity from people at Oracle like yourself to be able to change that perception.

Karissa Breen [00:10:18]:
Yes. In Australia, I know that here is obviously very different in the US, but in Australia, I still think that that’s a very hardcore perception.

Stephen Bovis [00:10:26]:
If you look at it from an overall perspective, I mean, we are the fastest growing hyperscaler in the market in terms of what we’re doing. The model that we can take to the customer is a very, very different model in that we have the ability to do multi cloud and we’ve led the way there in terms of initially working closely with Microsoft and now Google, and then to be AWS. So Microsoft is, as we spoke to earlier, is now live in Australia and we’ve got live customers that are currently consuming that service. And then if you look at our distributed cloud capabilities, we offer our customers there and certainly what I’m seeing is significant uptake in terms of not just multi cloud, but also how we’re able to do distributed cloud as well. And a great example of that is what we’ve been doing over in New Zealand where by we’re working very, very closely with a partner, Team I’m or what they refer to themselves as Team Cloud. And in that particular market, they’ve just announced as well that they’ve got eWei indigenous funding coming into their organization. So what that gives them is sovereign capability in New Zealand. We effectively started working with TeamIM prior to CloudWorld last year and we signed the contract shortly after CloudWorld last year, and we delivered the cloud and it was up and going on the 1st August.

Stephen Bovis [00:12:02]:
And many of the other hyperscalers made announcements 3 4 years ago for what they were going to do in New Zealand in terms of bringing a cloud to New Zealand, and the customers over there are still waiting. We’re now the customers in New Zealand have the opportunity to work with the partner and Oracle to effectively have sovereign based cloud services for New Zealand. And so that’s one example of where I would argue that we’re changing a perception from the marketplace. We spoke about Azure. What will be announced tomorrow is that Fontera is a public reference customer, so they’re one of a few that have already started consuming, those services. And if I was to sort of give you a number is that we have over 100 plus customers that are interested in that service alone in Australia. And what we’re seeing is more and more customers really looking, at what opportunity and value they can get out of multi cloud. So, I would argue that to your point, yes, a bit of a perception issue, but I would say that we’re changing it because what I’m seeing is significant growth and what I’m seeing is more and more customers choosing to move to Oracle for either multi cloud or straight OCI services or alternatively also the distributed models that we have available.

Karissa Breen [00:13:28]:
So let’s get more into the multi cloud side of things. There’s been a couple of announcements with you know, you can talk a little bit more on in terms of Fidelity. What is your view then on that? And I have a question, to follow that out with is, would you say as well I mean, I’ve spoken to, you know, multiple executives from, you know, major vendors across the world, and someone said something to me quite interestingly recently. And he said that, you know, large companies, they shouldn’t have the monopoly. What would be your view then on with all these announcements going on? Obviously, now speaking to to others in this space, you’re obviously working together, which makes sense. Right? Because a 100 percent 100% of 0 is is 0, but now you’ve obviously got an opportunity to it’s on a zero sum game. Did you ever think you’d get to this sort of point by working with the others, what I mean by that?

Stephen Bovis [00:14:16]:
The initial announcement back some time ago in terms of having a connect to Azure, had been in place for quite some time before we announced, bringing the database to the Azure platform. And I mean Oracle’s past, as you heard Larry speak to hopefully earlier, is that the focus has been from an Oracle point of view has always been to be an open company. We started that in terms of database and within our cloud platform, we’re doing exactly the same thing. So, what that does from my point of view is that if you take mission critical applications or you take a mission critical database is that we know from a technology perspective is that they do run very, very well on OCI, both from performance, security, and also cost. And so, therefore, one of the challenges that we’ve had from a customer perspective is that customers have wanted to move large databases, move mission critical workloads to the cloud, but they’ve been unable to do it because it hasn’t been that easy to do it. And that’s why depending on which analysts you sort of reference, they will say that there’s probably somewhere like 40%, 50%, maybe 60% of the workloads in the cloud. There’s a bunch of workloads that haven’t moved and the reason why is because they’re difficult to move. And database is one of those examples.

Stephen Bovis [00:15:46]:
So what we’ve been able to achieve with OCI, our version 2 of OCI, is that it does run things like databases and mission critical workloads really, really well. So therefore, then integrating that and accepting the fact that the customer is going to have a multi vendor environment, different applications, potentially different clouds, is that what we’re now doing is giving the customer the capability to be able to run the workload on the very best cloud platform. And in this case, that’s why the OCI, at either Azure or Google or otherwise, AWS has been available or been made available as an option for those customers.

Karissa Breen [00:16:33]:
Do you ever think as well, just I mean, I’m just curious to know if you zoom out that all the cloud providers would be working together. Do you think anyone ever sort of hypothesize, like, this was gonna happen, would you say? Because everyone wants to win the monopoly. Like, no one and that was to my earlier point before. You know, everyone wants to have the market share, but to my earlier observation, you know, you can still collaborate and still win together. So do you think that’s sort of changing now across, like, vendors? Because, like, back in the day, like, no one wants to share their customers, but obviously now it’s like, well, if we can sort of get 25% each, then it’s still 25%.

Stephen Bovis [00:17:08]:
It comes back to the earlier point around listening to customers. And if you’re listening to customers and customers are requesting different things of Oracle or the industry, then I believe that for us to be able to bring good value to the customers, give them choice, is that we should be challenging. We should be challenging the market, if you want to call it that, and coming out with solutions like we’ve done. And we have led the way there, certainly led the way in terms of our approach of, as we’ve discussed, is not just the multi cloud, but also, you know, coming out with a very, very different version in the way that we actually can bring the cloud to the customer as well.

Karissa Breen [00:17:52]:
I want to focus on cost for a moment because obviously this is something that people do seem to be focused on, which makes sense. Aware of, you know, OCI and, you know, costing model seems fair, but with the multi cloud sort of approach, would you say this is cost effective for customers just from your perspective?

Stephen Bovis [00:18:11]:
Of course, it is because what it’s doing again is it’s giving them choice. You know, it’s quite interesting because because, you know, there’s there’s a there’s a school of thought, even from many customers that I’ve spoken to is that if you go back and a customer was buying standard service or storage is they would very much treat that like a commodity in a lot of ways. I believe now with cloud adoption where it’s become much more mature is a customer can be looking at it exactly the same way in terms of it is a commodity because it’s readily available in the marketplace. There’s multiple hyperscalers out there that they can go and consume the cloud services from. So, what this does in my view is that it does, from an overall cost perspective, it gives the customer a lot of choice. And as we’ve spoken to is that the Oracle Cloud in terms of the way it’s been built does run faster. So, therefore, what that means from a customer perspective is that they can do things quicker and the cloud is all based on as you go, so you’re paying for what you use, so therefore then you do see a cost benefit.

Karissa Breen [00:19:21]:
The reason why I ask that is sometimes having lots of choices, there’s so many vendors out there, sometimes people can feel confused. In saying that though, on the other side of it, it’s like, well, people sort of know what they want now. Why? Because they can go there do their own research, they can understand things from a market point of view, so people now are probably a little a lot more equipped with the knowledge and understanding what they want a little bit more specifically as of perhaps to 10, 15 years ago where things weren’t you know, there wasn’t as much content in that online where people can actually do their own recon. So would you say that this is gonna be, like, customers are just gonna keep telling vendors like yourself this is what we want and vendors like yourself have to adapt to that? Would you say that not everyone is probably is doing that as effective, would you say?

Stephen Bovis [00:20:05]:
I certainly believe we’re doing it effectively. I mean, we’re listening to the market and that’s why, you know, launched the range of solutions and services that we have today. As I as I’ve spoken to is that not only are we providing that service every day to the constantly bringing new innovation every day as well. So, therefore, what and that innovation is being driven based on what our customers have been requesting. So very much as we’ve spoken over the last day or so is that the reason why multi cloud exists is because we have listened to customers and then we’ve worked with the other hyperscalers in the market to make services available. No different than topics like security, no different than topics like how do we improve productivity, whether that be with things like using generative AI and embedding that in all parts of the stack that Oracle’s coming to market to help customers improve productivity. And that’s one of the biggest challenges that we have in Australia at the moment is our productivities are very, very low levels compared to where they used to be. And if you look at technologies like generative AI, they can free us up from some of those menial tasks, and give us the ability to significantly improve our productivity.

Stephen Bovis [00:21:27]:
So I sort of look at all these things in terms of what by listening to customers, we’ve got the ability to deliver services. I mean, a classic example of this is that we have a federal government customer, a federal government customer in Canberra who asked for a cloud based service, but on that cloud based service, they wanted people from Fireflies countries only to provide that service. And we’ve now created that service for Australian customers in government and we can deliver that service. And there’s an example of something specific that we’ve done in Australia.

Karissa Breen [00:22:04]:
Okay. So I’m the reason why I’m asking you these questions, Stephen, is because if people like myself aren’t, customers, they may raise it, but also they’ll just go away. They’ll just completely cut ties, move on. So I think you obviously know that there is a problem, but you’re trying to change it. And that’s the part that I’m really, really interested in understanding more about today.

Stephen Bovis [00:22:25]:
There’s been a historic problem, and we are changing it. And and I’ve got numerous customer examples where we’re changing it. And and as I said, some of those customers had decided to move away from their Oracle footprint, and others have decided to effectively reinvest. When I talked about the interest around multi cloud is that many of the customers who have been somewhat dormant with Oracle for a period of time, There’s many of those that are very, very interested. In fact, some of our cut first customers in that service are customers that had not done a lot with Oracle, for some time.

Karissa Breen [00:23:04]:
This is important because, obviously, you know, Oracle’s been around for so long. People have a perception. Whether it’s good, bad, we’re just discussing perhaps what the perception can come across as for people that I’ve spoken to in the market, which is part of my role. But the parallel I draw it to is, like, Australian airlines. Like, sometimes if they had a bad experience with a specific airline, they just won’t apply them again, pure and simple. Like, doesn’t matter. They’ll pay more elsewhere. So have you sort of seen that as well with with Oracle in terms of people being frustrated historically? Yes.

Karissa Breen [00:23:32]:
Things are changing. I’m talking about historic perception and the frustration that people had. I know you’re relatively new in the game and you’re trying to change it and the team’s changing, but, obviously, that frustration is probably still a bit residual there, would you say?

Stephen Bovis [00:23:45]:
I would say that there there is. There’s there’s no doubt about that. And when I joined Oracle, I mean, I was, with an alternative organization. And when I was with that organization, I used to get feedback, unsolicited in a lot of cases from customers that would share their experiences being not, not that pleasant. So when I decided to join Oracle, I was fully aware of that when I came on board. And in fact, that was one of the reasons why I came on board. And one of the reasons why Oracle asked me to come on board was to actually help because the company is transforming and they needed somebody to help them in the Australian market in particular, really reengage. And what I’ve seen and observed, I mean, it’s quite interesting because even my boss, Garrett, he was in Australia and he had the opportunity to engage with a lot of different customers.

Stephen Bovis [00:24:41]:
We had a customer advisory board as well, which is something that I introduced where we’ve got a number of senior CIOs that came to that and we’re going to run a follow-up session based on the feedback that we got from customers. But what Garev observed and certainly what I’ve observed is that in the last 18 months since I’ve been on board is that we have made a lot of progress. We’ve got customers who I would consider were dormant, who have now started to reengage with Oracle and starting to buy our new technologies and our new solutions. We’ve had some customers, in fact, that had actually made a decision to move away from Oracle and on re engagement, we’ve been able to turn that around and likewise, move them forward. So the way I look at it is that, I mean, the Oracle footprint is very broad in the marketplace, whether it be a large financial services organization, whether it be a large retailer, whether it be a large telecommunications company, whether it be federal government, whether it be state government, generally, it would be very unlikely that a customer does not have some form of Oracle footprint in there. And as a result of that, I look at that base and say that that is our fantastic opportunity now with all the changes that the organization’s going through and the new technology that we have available to actually reengage those customers and bring a very, very different experience and hopefully change that perception with those customers. And certainly, what I’ve seen is that we are making progress and we are doing that.

Karissa Breen [00:26:17]:
Okay. So there’s a couple of things in there which is interesting, which I think is very, very important. So how did it get to this point where people obviously disgruntled? Do you think it’s a global cultural thing, or do you think it was predecessor? It was a regional thing? Is it Australians are difficult in terms of clientele as opposed to North America?

Stephen Bovis [00:26:33]:
I do believe that, you know, from my experience, I mean, I worked in Asia for many years, and dealt with customers across Asia, everywhere from Japan, China, whatever. And what I do find is that all customers are quite different. And I do think that Australian customers, in general, are very mature in terms of their approach to IT technology. And, you know, as a result of that, you know, we do need to, as an organization, you know, we do need to work hard to really, you know, bring value to those companies. And, you know, I I mean, I say this to my team regularly when I talk a little bit about the cultural piece is that the only way to do this is hard work. That’s it. It’s as simple as that. There’s no there’s no other magic here is that we’ve it’s hard work.

Stephen Bovis [00:27:23]:
And as we, you know, spoke about a little bit earlier, it’s about really just getting out and and talking to customers 1 by 1 by 1 by 1.

Karissa Breen [00:27:30]:
So when you say reengage, do you mean like calling them, emailing them, smoke signal? What are we what are we talking here?

Stephen Bovis [00:27:36]:
So we’re reengaging in a number of ways. So number 1, since I’ve been on board, we had COVID there for a period of time, which made it, quite difficult to do marketing events. You could do virtual things, but very difficult to engage customers and keep them engaged. So one of the areas that we’ve been focused on is running a significant amount of marketing related events. I spoke to the board of advisors, so that’s an opportunity for us to engage a group of senior CIOs and really facilitate or help facilitate a conversation between them in terms of the challenges that they’re having and the opportunities that are there and not really using it as a sort of a sales opportunity. It’s more to invest in them as organizations. Just recently, I’ve been on a multi city roadshow, which is not completed yet, which is called the Data AI Forum. And it’s been remarkable, the amount of customers that have come out of that event and said, I didn’t know Oracle did those things.

Stephen Bovis [00:28:39]:
And and that’s part of getting our message out and changing that perception. We ran 1 in Sydney. It was so successful, that I worked with the marketing team to say, we need to run this as a multi city. We’ve run Canberra, we’ve done Melbourne, we’ve done Perth, and we’ve got Auckland coming up, and we’ve got Brisbane coming up in October. So one angle is around localized marketing for customers, which can be a combination of things from events and so forth. And then the other area is engagement, which I would consider to be face to face with a customer.

Karissa Breen [00:29:15]:
Just wanna follow this track a little bit more. Would you say as well with marketing now I’ve raised this with multiple executives across Oracle because, again, it is a perception. Would you say that perhaps, historically or generally speaking, Oracle has been reliant off their big, enormous brand with the database side of things that was gonna carry them in the cloud space, would you say?

Stephen Bovis [00:29:36]:
Definitely not. I mean, what I would say is that the portfolio has changed significantly, whether that be our applications portfolio, horizontal industry specific applications, whether that be even the database itself has changed in terms of the capability, in terms of autonomous and the ability to be able to do AI search directly in the database using human language to do that search, to the cloud based platform and all those services that we’re running within cloud, but then providing that from both a multi cloud approach and also a distributed approach. So that is a lot of change that the organization’s gone through. So therefore, it is really important for us to be out and educating our customers and speaking to our customers in terms of what’s possible and what Oracle is doing and how Oracle can help them with some of the biggest challenges that they have. And we spoke about database as an example, running database in the cloud. There has been a big challenge that customers have had. And now with OCI, we’ve bought that available in terms of being able to run big mission critical databases in the cloud, but now giving customers that capability to be able to do that in a multi cloud way.

Karissa Breen [00:30:58]:
And just to follow that up a little bit more with perception, adoption, as I’ve mentioned with multiple Oracle employees I’ve spoken to, executives, when people think cloud, they do not think OCI is number 1. So what’s your view to people? They wake up and they think cloud, hyperscaler, it’s OCI. Do you think it’s going to get to that point?

Stephen Bovis [00:31:17]:
I believe so. Yeah. Why not? I mean, we’re the 4th hyperscaler in the market in terms of, our market our market share, whether that be globally or whether that be in Australia. And in terms of what I’m seeing in terms of our growth being the fastest growing hyperscaler and the ability for us to be able to scale very quickly, I do see that OCI will very much be synonymous in terms of cloud. Absolutely.

Karissa Breen [00:31:52]:
Joining me now in person is Stephanie Trunzo, senior vice president and general manager at Oracle Industry. So, Stephanie, thanks for joining, and welcome.

Stephanie Trunzo [00:31:59]:
Yeah. I’m so happy to be here.

Karissa Breen [00:32:01]:
So perhaps, Stephanie, let’s start with for those who are not familiar, can you explain a little bit more about Oracle Industries?

Stephanie Trunzo [00:32:07]:
Yeah. Sure. So, you know, Oracle has horizontal technology that I think most people know about, so our cloud platform, database. But we also develop solutions that are very specific to industries. So we’re understanding the the nuances of what that particular industry needs and then developing applications on our Oracle stack, taking advantage of all those horizontal, applications, and offering them things that are very specific to their needs. So, you know, to give you a very quick example, we have industries that like retail, hospitality, health care, you know, construction, manufacturing, energy, and water. So regardless of what industry somebody’s coming from, they’re not just able to take advantage of the underlying infrastructure technology we offer, but also take advantage of those specific solutions that we’re building on top.

Karissa Breen [00:32:56]:
And would you say in terms of Oracle Industries, you know, just doing some rudimentary reconnaissance, do you think it’s still, like, emerging for what people know about it more specifically? Perhaps it’s more well known in North America, but less so maybe the Asia or JAPAC region.

Stephanie Trunzo [00:33:09]:
I think that could be true. I think, you know, the more that we are working on developing these specific solutions, the more that we’re rolling them out globally. And I do think it depends on the industry. So some of our industries, like health care, for example, we have a really large global footprint. So I think it is a little bit dependent on the geography as well as the industry itself.

Karissa Breen [00:33:27]:
And so perhaps that talk me through your view and approach to applying to AI. And I know that you’re obviously more specific in the health care space so that maybe let’s start there and we can sort of get we can dive a little bit deeper.

Stephanie Trunzo [00:33:37]:
Yeah. So the approach that we’re taking, you know, AI is fortunately or unfortunately what everybody is talking about. It’s not new. But what is new is the way that we’re able to take advantage of the massive amounts of data that are now available and the enhancements that we have in the compute power to leverage that data, and the way that we’re thinking about our cloud platform as well, so that there are, you know, many, many smaller data centers that we can leverage. The way that we think about applied AI is taking all of those AI services and actually building them into the application. So our customers don’t need to necessarily use those services themselves to build solutions. They can just take advantage of the fact that AI is already built into our industry application. So taking healthcare first as an example, we have something called the Oracle Clinical Digital Assistant.

Stephanie Trunzo [00:34:29]:
So one of the challenges in healthcare and, you know, you and and anybody with a body or a brain probably has a situation like this where you go to the doctor and you end up, you know, telling them the same information 5 or 6 different times. They’re holding an iPad. They’re entering that information. The doctor or physician isn’t actually looking at you, looking at you in the eyes, talking to you about your, you know, condition or what it is the reason that you’re there. It also means that our you know, the crisis really globally around the workforce in healthcare. There’s burnout. They’re working, you know, millions of hours. They’re not able to see as many patients a day as that they wish that they could.

Stephanie Trunzo [00:35:05]:
So our digital assistant, what it is doing is removing that burden from the interaction between the physician and the patient. So instead of having an iPad and asking you, you know, how much you weigh and what your conditions are and what medications you’re taking, instead, the digital assistant is pulling many different sources of data, including your patient record, all of the information you’ve already provided, regardless of whether you’ve been at that practice before or not. And they’re informing the physician before they even walk in the room to see you. During the interaction then, that digital assistant is listening. It’s paying attention to the interaction that you’re having. The physician can now actually spend time looking you in the eye and talking to you about what your issue is and why you’re really there and provide really why they went to school in the 1st place to become a physician. That digital assistant then is gonna produce a note that writes up all of the things that happened during your conversation. It’s gonna produce that in a way that writes straight back into your patient record.

Stephanie Trunzo [00:36:07]:
And as the patient, it can even do things like help you get to the point of payment. So you’re aware of how much it’s gonna cost when you walk out the door. So now you know, the information in your care plan, the that is synced up to your patient record, and you know how much you’re gonna pay. And the physician is now able to see more patients in a day because they’re not spending time, you know, entering that data in the evenings. They’re not spending that time entering that data between their encounters.

Karissa Breen [00:36:32]:
Okay. So there’s a couple of things in there which is interesting. So I I’ve recently spoken to someone in health care about leveraging AI, so I I am familiar with this. So I wanna talk to you a little bit more. So you said before with leveraging what Oracle’s built in terms of the health care, and you’ve given an example. So what I’m hearing from what you’re saying, Stephanie, is obviously people spend a lot of time writing notes and doing real trivial, mundane, monotonous tasks. So they could condense that with the capability for what you’re saying.

Stephanie Trunzo [00:36:58]:
The AI is doing that work for them instead of them having to take their time doing it.

Karissa Breen [00:37:03]:
What do you think the percentage of the reduction would be? Would you if you had to hypothesize?

Stephanie Trunzo [00:37:07]:
Well, I can tell you that, you know, one of the hospitals where we have already rolled this out, one of the clinical practices, they’re seeing somewhere between 10 to 12 minutes reduction per encounter. So that’s doing things like either enabling them to see maybe 5 or 6 more patients in a given day, or it’s enabling them to not spend their evenings doing that work, on top of their patient load.

Karissa Breen [00:37:30]:
Do you think as well it will you know, obviously, I know that the health care system is very different to other parts of the world. But would you say with this capability, it’s gonna allow people to have health care a little bit more readily available because they don’t have to go to the doctor for real basic tasks? It’s automatically going to be summarized?

Stephanie Trunzo [00:37:46]:
Absolutely. Absolutely. So it’s gonna do, you know, a huge variety of things. The clinical digital assistant is just one example of how AI is gonna help us with health care challenges. You know, the one that I described is really about the actual encounter, the physician and the patient talking with one another. But if you think about applying AI in things like telehealth or your ability to, you know, even we’re getting to a place where hospital at home is a reality. So whether you’re having in home care, that’s gonna create an opportunity for you to have care regardless of where the physician is at. You know, it’s it’s kind of normalizing, if you will, your access to care.

Karissa Breen [00:38:23]:
And what about collection of that data in terms of, like, patient records and security and stuff around that? Do you have any thoughts? I know you’re not from a cyber background, but do you have any sort of insights you can share? Yeah.

Stephanie Trunzo [00:38:33]:
You know, obviously, Oracle takes security extremely seriously. And our because our, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is, you know, security is baked in. Everything we’re building and all of our applied AI use cases in healthcare are is built on top of Oracle infrastructure. So that security is built in. I think the other thing that’s really important in terms of, you know, security and privacy is that all of the permissions, all of the consents, all of those things are built

Stephen Bovis [00:39:03]:
into the platform itself as well. So no one is gonna

Stephanie Trunzo [00:39:03]:
be able to access your platform itself as well. So no one is gonna be able to access your information unless you have given them permission, and those consents have been already recorded. So those configurations are already to go rolled out effectively. So you don’t

Karissa Breen [00:39:13]:
have to manually do it. Absolutely. And that’s the part I think people forget when it comes to cloud stuff, for example, because they don’t they just think, well, it’s in the cloud, so I don’t have to do anything. Right. But you’re saying it’s already come, like, preloaded effectively.

Stephanie Trunzo [00:39:29]:
Yes. Yeah. You’re getting that for free, essentially, because of the infrastructure that it’s built on top of.

Karissa Breen [00:39:35]:
So you’re clicking on the starter, obviously. So what about, like, predictions? Is this something that with what you’re talking about in terms of applied AI, for example, we can use me as an example, perhaps I go to the doctor, say I drink too much caffeine, I can’t sleep, I have anxiety, I’ve got problems. Is this sort of the path that you’re going down in terms of predictions in terms of, like, issues with people’s health?

Stephanie Trunzo [00:39:55]:
So yeah. And what you’re talking about is really getting towards things like, I would say, population health. So for example, maybe I’ll just take mammograms as an example. So we can combine data around segments of population, understand segmentation, particular zip code, for example. We know in this particular zip code, maybe there are some environmental factors that we can factor in. We can do things like tell a particular hospital system, this segment of the population, you should push a message proactively to these people that they should come in for a regular mammogram. So you can do things that are more predictive in the sense of helping people proactively understand the things that they should be doing to take care of their health before there’s an actual problem that they need to be, you know, seeing a doctor for. So it’s flipping it from a reactive episodic situation into something that’s more about proactively managing the population’s

Karissa Breen [00:40:50]:
health. So one of the one thing I’ve been asking my interviews specific around this is come from a tech background, practitioner by trade, but I get all this. But do you think we’re gonna get to a stage where it’s analysis paralysis, where we’re constantly analyzing, constantly predicting? Is that then gonna do a disservice to the point where it does generate something because you’re so worried about these predictions that perhaps, you know, what you’re talking about is creating for people in their minds?

Stephanie Trunzo [00:41:14]:
Yeah. I mean, I think that’s a really interesting thought. I do feel like if it’s done properly, that should not happen. Right? So part of, I think, the way that we leverage this technology for positive outcomes is also considering the language that you’re using, the way that you’re pushing those messages out. So it’s not just good enough to know, you know, the population that you need

Stephen Bovis [00:41:35]:
to send a message

Stephanie Trunzo [00:41:35]:
to, but you also need to understand how to message it. So there’s a lot of and and I think this gets into why it’s very, very important that we don’t think about AI as divorced from humanity. We think about it as something that’s assisting the humans. So people still need to be involved in how they message those things, how they think about rolling out AI, how they use and leverage those insights.

Karissa Breen [00:41:57]:
And is this what you mean by done properly? Yes. Okay. And then talk to you a little bit more about divorce from humanity. So is it what you’re saying is that perhaps you will think, oh, well, AI is gonna do it, and therefore, I don’t have to have any human oversight or governance that you’re saying?

Stephanie Trunzo [00:42:10]:
Yes. And I think there’s a lot of fear, you know, and not just in health care, but in the other industries as well. A lot of fear that AI is going to displace humans or displace workforce. And I think that the reality is instead, it’s gonna shift the value of what the people are actually bringing to the table. And, you know, just in the example I was giving of our clinical digital assistant, right now, there are a number of, you know, a huge number of doctors who are not operating at the top of their license. They went to school, you know, to be able to treat you for these illnesses, and and that’s what they should be doing. But instead, they’re doing data entry. And so AI, what it should be doing is allowing people to be operating at the top of their license, not doing things like data entry.

Stephanie Trunzo [00:42:53]:
But it’s not saying I’m going to replace the experts.

Karissa Breen [00:42:56]:
And would it concern you, Stephanie, if what what you’re saying in terms of, like, hallucinations around AI, around me predicting something that I potentially have based off the AI, but in fact, I don’t?

Stephanie Trunzo [00:43:06]:
Yeah. So that’s great. You know, in terms of the digital assistant experience, when it generates a doctor’s note at the end, what it’s doing is presenting it to the physician to review. It’s not doing the work for them. So the human still needs to review that and sign off on it. They still need to say, yes, this is accurate. Yes, this is the what I intended the care plan to be. So if there was anything like errant data or something that was creating a hallucination or if the model was generating information that didn’t make sense, the human would not.

Stephanie Trunzo [00:43:37]:
That would still be the doctor’s responsibility to ensure that what they were doing was what they mean. That’s what they mean the note to say. That’s what they mean the patient to be treated with. That’s the medication that they suggested.

Karissa Breen [00:43:49]:
And so then following this a little bit more, would you say like human beings, what you said obviously that, you know, humans still need to have oversight and to discern that information. Are you ever worried that perhaps we’re gonna feel so reliant on AI and technology that perhaps is like, well, I can’t even tell whether this is true or not true, or do I have to look at it again? Is it gonna get to that type of place?

Stephanie Trunzo [00:44:08]:
You know, I think we’re seeing already a little bit of this where you you have to stamp something, whether it’s been AI generated or human generated. And I do think that, you know, in using healthcare continuing in that example, you’re gonna know you’re gonna be able to know that the information that’s generated, whether it’s coming from a model or if it’s coming from a human that’s entered that information. So it it will be apparent.

Karissa Breen [00:44:31]:
I wanna sort of switch gears slightly, and I wanna talk about Oracle Health. So I’m aware that Oracle Health is building an open health care platform. So perhaps share your role, and and what’s your view and your strategy and your vision for for launching Oracle Health as more of a a global business.

Stephanie Trunzo [00:44:47]:
Yeah. So it’s it’s been a really wild ride in a good way. You know, we, during the pandemic, developed a lot of solutions really out of, you know, moral obligation to the globe. So we did things like immunization management software. We helped manage that not just for the US, but many other countries around the world. Through that process, we learned some really interesting things. We learned that very quickly we could stand up solutions that that met regulatory needs, that met privacy needs, and we decided to turn that into a formalized portfolio. That’s when we launched Oracle Health.

Stephanie Trunzo [00:45:19]:
As soon as we launched Oracle Health, we realized that we needed to get a stronger footprint. We really needed to get into the hospital space. We needed to get into the provider space. We already had a pretty strong payer business. We had a life sciences business. But we wanted to bring all of those things together. And that’s what led us to acquire Cerner. After acquiring Cerner, we integrated their clinical portfolio into what we already had in our existing Oracle Health portfolio.

Stephanie Trunzo [00:45:45]:
But I think our understanding is that, you know, today’s problem is that those systems were all built for transactions. They were built so that, you know, you could code things correctly so that you could create the right kinds of claims so you could get the right kind of reimbursement. They weren’t built to be systems intended for patient interactions. And as a result of that, you’ve got all these silos of data. So, you know, you go to one doctor and you change states or you move, you go to another another practice. They don’t have the information from the last practice that you visited. So where does your health record live? It doesn’t really live with you, and it’s not really connected. So what we’re trying to do with that underlying platform is build that open set of APIs that lets us leverage the data about your health regardless of where it sits today.

Karissa Breen [00:46:35]:
Are you perhaps looking at people that don’t want their their data centralized about their health? I mean, there’s been breaches, more specific to Australia that have had there was a Medibank, got breached recently in, like, last couple of years. And, you know, one thing and I I’ve worked in a bank previously, so it’s one thing to get your money back. Yes. Another thing to have your patient records out there. Yeah. What’s your view then on that?

Stephanie Trunzo [00:46:57]:
Yeah. Absolutely. And in fact, in the US, we had a really large, data breach change.org, in fact, earlier this year. And, you know, change.org, it was not not an Oracle data breach, but it was a situation like you’re describing where a lot of people’s information was technically available, and it really shut down a lot of care for people for a while. The way that we are thinking about it is different. We are requiring, you know, you as a human to be responsible for your own data. So only your own consents. For example, you could say, I’m going to a new practice, and I want them to have access to my data, and I want them to have access only to, you know, my information from the last 2 years.

Stephanie Trunzo [00:47:38]:
I want them only to have access to the medications that I’m taking, or I want them only to have access whatever it is that’s relevant to the visit that you’re having. And you can also set things like timelines on that. I want them to have it for 6 months. I want them to have it for 2 years. So you are in control of that information versus it being owned by, let’s say, a hospital system.

Karissa Breen [00:47:58]:
That I get. My only concern would be as a consumer, perhaps people, you know, forget about it and they, you know, say, I didn’t set the timeline for the last 2 years. I wasn’t aware how to do that. This is that gonna start to creep into, yes, giving their responsibilities to individuals, the consumers, but, you know, knowing people that they don’t follow the rules or they don’t follow, perhaps, you know, rudimentary, you know, requirements like what with what you’re saying.

Stephanie Trunzo [00:48:22]:
Right. You know, and today, it’s it’s today. Okay. If you needed to go see a specialist, for example, you have to go get, you know, your prior x rays or, you know, whatever test that you’ve already had, and they’re gonna burn them on a CD for you, or they’re gonna give you a physical copy, and you’re gonna have to carry it somewhere and take it to the next specialist that you’re seeing. So the challenges today are so much more of a I would consider so much more of a security issue than when you’re talking about this from a digital perspective. It’s a lot easier for us to be able to turn on or off or leverage consents in the right way than it is for us to take control of the fact that there’s still paper based systems. There’s still CDs that are being handed around physically. In hospitals, because it is so challenging, there are things like there’s stories you go talk to people about what they’re doing today, and they’re doing things like, and I’m not joking, stuffing paperwork up in, you know, ceiling tiles because it’s faster for them to access than access it through their computer.

Karissa Breen [00:49:23]:
I’ve never heard of that, but I will make note of that. Unfortunately

Stephanie Trunzo [00:49:27]:
accurate and not just in in, you know, a few cases. This is a common practice.

Karissa Breen [00:49:32]:
So do you envision this being becoming like, rolling this out? So, obviously, you your plans have it as a global business. How long is this gonna take for adoption? Because as we know, people get a bit weird about certain things with all the breaches and things. So what’s the adoption rate gonna look like, would you say?

Stephanie Trunzo [00:49:47]:
I think first, people need to understand the problem. I think one of the big challenges in health care is that consumers and just humans, I’ll say, don’t understand that they do have a right to their own health data in the 1st place. When they understand that, I think adoption will be faster. I think educating people on even as I just said, some of these things that are happening today, the practices that are occurring today, I don’t think people are are aware of how unsecure their information is already.

Karissa Breen [00:50:16]:
Why don’t they understand that, would you say?

Stephanie Trunzo [00:50:18]:
Well, it’s definitely not something people are often talking about. You know? Health systems are not gonna be saying, like, we are having challenges with how we look at our patient data. We have challenges with accessing information from other systems. And I think that also, you know, unlike, you know, you you mentioned financial data, they already know that they should be responsible for their own financial data. They don’t want other people to have that information or be be responsible for it. Whereas with health data, there’s an imbalance in knowledge. You believe that the doctors and the hospital systems are the experts, and so you put your trust in them having that information accurate for you and safe for you. Whereas, they don’t just feel the same sense of ownership, I think, over that information.

Karissa Breen [00:51:01]:
And do you trust doctors and hospitals to keep that information safe?

Stephanie Trunzo [00:51:05]:
I would say at a disadvantage because the technology is not there for them to be able to do that effectively and do their jobs well. And that’s the challenge that we’re trying to solve for.

Karissa Breen [00:51:15]:
And so your view is also that with everything you’re saying that, you know, part of Oracle, Oracle Health sort of strategy is to improve the care and the and the outcomes for patients as well. So can you maybe explain a little bit more about what you foresee perhaps in in the future with everything that you’re doing?

Stephanie Trunzo [00:51:30]:
Yeah. I think what’s gonna happen is that we’re gonna start seeing consumers driving that behavior. We’re gonna start seeing some changes in the way that we look at different populations. You know, there’s a lot of inequity in the way that that we look at healthcare, you know, globally and certainly in the US. We’re gonna be able, I think, to reach more people because we’re able to reach out into general populations and encourage more proactive care. Today, you know, the most expensive populations are the older populations, the underprivileged and underserved populations. They’re the ones that cost the most money because they are not proactive with their health. They do not have the same resources.

Stephanie Trunzo [00:52:11]:
They do not have the same access. I think the changes that we’re making and the new technology that we’re bringing into the health care systems are gonna create a lot more opportunity for more people to receive care. So those are the kinds of things that I see changing. The other thing I would say is we didn’t really touch on yet is, the connection with research and life sciences. So clinical studies, clinical trials, just to give a quick example of what will be possible that wasn’t before. The way clinical trials work, there’s a certain finite period of time that they’re doing research on whatever it is that they’re studying. At the end of that trial, they stop collecting the data. Right? You know, the trial is over.

Stephanie Trunzo [00:52:52]:
They’ve gotten information that they needed. The people that were part of the trial, they’re no longer, you know, I involved. Data is so cheap now, continuing to follow. As long as they agree to continue to be part of that trial, you could continue collecting that data forever. Now you have a massive amount of information that you can draw from that isn’t just in that time period that the trial was running. The other thing that’s gonna happen is that we can connect that information with the hospital systems. So I could say to you, you’re a great candidate for this trial, and I know that because now I can see the information about the trials that are coming up, as well as the data that I have about you and your health. Today, that’s very difficult for people to get recruited into trials, to know that there is a trial available, to create trials that actually have equity in the kinds of people that are being studied in the trial.

Stephanie Trunzo [00:53:43]:
So those changes I also see really driving a lot of very big impact because those are big kinds of changes that we’re talking about. They’ll impact our ability to see things like even going back to the pandemic, understanding the path that, say, you know, something like a pathogen is taking or understanding what’s going on globally when something like, hopefully not, but a pandemic, being able to see that information as well as what the the treatments that that could be helpful.

Karissa Breen [00:54:11]:
And maybe just to conclude our interview, one of the things that I’m personally curious about working in the the cyber arena would be And this is something that I’ve noticed probably online with people. Do you think they’re becoming desensitized to their information? And what I mean by that question is, with all the breaches that have happened, I’ve heard people say, oh, well, who cares? It’s already on the dark web. It’s already out there. People already know it, so who cares? Are you fearful that’s gonna get to a point where people just don’t care anymore because they have had all these breaches, whether it’s in health care or financial? It’s on the dark web. You can access it if you want it. Is that worry you perhaps?

Stephanie Trunzo [00:54:44]:
I feel like, you know, the I’ll just tell you a little story. I think when we talk about security and, you know, people get concerned about those kinds of things, but in terms of desensitizing, my grandpa, you know, my grandpa was always worried that somebody would come steal mail out of his mailbox. So, you know, he got a PO box and he would have all of his mail sent somewhere else so that he could go collect it when he felt like collecting it. And, you know, frankly, that was a lot more unsafe, honestly. Like people could collect all kinds of information if they wanted to grab things out of his mailbox. So, no, I don’t really think people are gonna become desensitized to it, but I do think that there is a certain amount of, overreaction that we need to pare down. So I think the pendulum will swing a little bit, but I don’t think it’s gonna go the whole way to we’re desensitized now and we’re, you know, we’re not concerned anymore about our own privacy of information.

Karissa Breen [00:55:46]:
Joining me now in person is Pradeep Vincent, senior vice president and chief technical architect, OCI at Oracle. Pradeep, thanks for joining, and welcome. So, Pradeep, I’m aware that you’re one of the founding members of OCI. I recently interviewed Mahesh Thyagarajan. I believe that’s gone, that’s been published now, that interview. So he’s had a similar journey to yourself in terms of a founding member. So perhaps tell us a little bit more about what your journey, what’s that look like?

Pradeep Vincent [00:56:10]:
Yeah. I beat Mahesh, just for the record. Yeah. So, I mean, we we, few few of us you know, I moved to Oracle 2014. I spent, you know, 10 10 years in AWS before that from beginning of AWS days, until 2014. We we came, you know, I think it it was me, a bunch of folks from AWS, Azure, strong cloud background. But, you know, primarily what we saw was, you know, the cloud industry was serving certain types of customers and workloads, but we saw in a big opportunity to serve enterprise customers in a very different way. And we, you know, I think we are very strongly sold, you know, a company that has credibility in the enterprise space would be able to make a big move and serve the customers better and that you know? And and and Oracle was willing willing to take a bet on us and, you know, do the investment.

Pradeep Vincent [00:57:03]:
And we launched the region few years later, and we’ve been growing ever since, and here we are.

Karissa Breen [00:57:09]:
So you said before, Pradeep, you wanna service enterprise in a different way. What do you mean by that?

Pradeep Vincent [00:57:15]:
We talked to a bunch of customers and, you know, also based on prior experience back in the day, we felt that, you know, the the cloud was more geared towards purely developer centric small companies, startups. We didn’t feel like, you know, it was suddenly at that time, it was really geared towards very security conscious customers. And customers that have they’re not greenfield. Many customers aren’t they don’t have greenfield apps. They have apps that they, you know, have and they, you know, it’s gonna take a while to move. Maybe they wanna launch new apps in the cloud, but they really want that to work really well with what they already have in the on prem. So we essentially, you know, sat down and looked at the security aspects and looked at, you know, the our region launch strategy and tuned it quite differently than other cloud providers do it so that we can address customers better. The dedicated regions, alloy, multi cloud strategy, all stem from that strategy.

Pradeep Vincent [00:58:15]:
We launched with public regions, but we quickly started launching lot of small regions with the goal of essentially taking our regions as close as possible to our customers. And then we, you know, talk to the customers. In many cases, customers, you know, wanted to have, like I said, on prem workloads, but then move parts of it to the cloud. And they really wanted the cloud to be, like, literally in their data center. So that’s why that’s how we came about with, like, dedicated regions and eventually alloy. And there, we essentially launched the region in customers, data centric. And then we, you know, just exactly like how customers want to have part of the workload on on prem and part of the workload on OCI, They also want to, you know, do the same thing with different cloud providers. They wanna have part of the workload in Azure or AWS, but then they also wanna use, you know, some OCI services.

Pradeep Vincent [00:59:07]:
And we wanted to enable that for exactly the same reason, and that’s why the multi cloud, you know, strategy came about. So I, you know, I think the the customer reception around that has been phenomenal, both dedicated dedicated region, our strategy as well as multi cloud.

Karissa Breen [00:59:23]:
There’s that theory that, you know, that first move is in shakers advantage. Clearly, OCI didn’t have that. So what would you say the advantage would be now if you had to sort of reflect on being a founding member, etcetera?

Pradeep Vincent [00:59:34]:
Yeah. I think the the advantage we have is essentially, we have the advantage to look at the rear view mirror when we started. And when we looked at it, we actually saw what worked but also saw what didn’t work. And, you know, I think that essentially allowed us to, you know, when we started right from the beginning, particularly for security as an example. It’s hard to retrofit, you know, a core security principle going back all the way when you already have a bunch of existing customers. So when we started out, we actually had the 2nd war advantage where we knew we had to take security in a very different way than what other cloud providers do. And, you know, we we came up with the off block virtualization technology and architecture, which stemmed from the whole notion that customers shouldn’t have to worry about cloud providers getting into their workloads and customers who shouldn’t have to worry about their workloads being interfered by other customers even though it’s a multi tenanted cloud. And we essentially took a very strong security posture around the customer isolation right from the beginning.

Pradeep Vincent [01:00:40]:
That’s the kind of thing that’s hard to retrofit. It takes it’ll take years to retrofit. So I think, you know, to me, that is a very good example of a second more advantage.

Karissa Breen [01:00:50]:
Okay. So you said before, Pradeep, what worked versus what didn’t work in terms of being, you know, retrospectively looking back. So what would you say more specifically what worked versus what what didn’t work now with with with your sort of view looking forward?

Pradeep Vincent [01:01:04]:
Yeah. I, you know, I think the yeah. Even looking back, you know, when we started, there was a full bunch of advantages with the cloud that we did wanna carry forward. Right? So looking at the very mirror, we did find a bunch of things that worked. As an example, API based automated services. That’s a huge one. Right? And and we really want it and we did work on the cloud and we we wanted to, take that forward. So, you know, the automation has been a big part of it, and we’ve been increasingly automating more and more aspects of it.

Pradeep Vincent [01:01:36]:
You know? Larry talks about, you know, autonomous database, autonomous security, all of that stems and, you know, it’s in the same theme as that. Those are all, you know, things that work. Right? The API based, access, which has allowed enterprise customers. Traditionally, maybe they they don’t quite have that type of automation, but a APIs allow them to automate them. And I’ve seen a big transformation in, you know, customers using the API to drive operations and automation on their side. And in addition to that, we are also investing in automation so that, you know, customers don’t have to worry about a lot of these, you know, intricacies. Zipper is another example of, you know, Larry on yesterday, is an another example of a security automation. So those are good examples of things work.

Pradeep Vincent [01:02:25]:
There are some some things we didn’t see that in in the rare mirror. We later on observed. I I don’t think anybody saw Chatcpd changing the world in a bunch of ways, but AI became a huge deal and, you know, we see massive opportunity there to serve our customers better. AI infrastructure in and of itself is its own world, and it has its own, you know, characteristics in in a bunch of ways. It has a bunch of common tools with everything else. Security is a big deal in AI as well. We see customers caring about data privacy, sovereignty, residency the same way that they do with any other workload with AI as well. But at the same time, you know, if you look at AI training, it’s its own beast in terms of the characteristics.

Pradeep Vincent [01:03:10]:
It requires, you know, huge amount of investment in large scale data centers and, you know, the there’s massive want of engineering work that needs to go in many aspects, data center technology and networking technology in order to deliver deliver for that. Those those are things that we didn’t see that at that time, but later on, we saw that along with every everybody else. So

Karissa Breen [01:03:30]:
there’s this also theory around be first and be best. So clearly, OCR wasn’t first, but what’s your view now to be to be the best?

Pradeep Vincent [01:03:38]:
Well, I think the the way we look at it is, you know, the first is not necessarily the best. I think best comes from how we serve customers and solve their really hard challenges that they are looking for us to solve. I think in that regard, we are actually quite differentiated. I think, you know, for as an example, with respect to multi cloud strategy, we are pulling the entire industry ahead. And, you know, as an example, when 1 year back when we launched the partnership with Azure, essentially, we essentially are building OCR region inside Azure data center. I don’t know of anything else that works that way. Right? And either OCI region inside Azure data center is like it’s not like, you know, some on prem thing. It’s exactly a OCI region.

Pradeep Vincent [01:04:20]:
We do the networking. We do the servers. We do the software deployment. Everything, RDMA network, everything that goes for the database services works exactly the same way as it does with OCI region. And that partnership was super exciting for our customers. So, you know, the customers spoke. Customers also spoke to other cloud providers. They wanted the same thing.

Pradeep Vincent [01:04:41]:
And now we actually have all the hyperscalers partner, you know, partnering in the same way. So in in many ways, I think from a customer standpoint, they were looking for the industry to solve the hard problem of, you know, multiple clouds working together. And in this context, you know, Oracle has been a leader fooling the industry forward and offering the right set of services so that their customers can actually use it.

Karissa Breen [01:05:07]:
So, Pradeep, with your experience, would you did you ever envision that any of these hyperscalers would be working together? Like, do you think if you had to with your experience now, did you ever think we can get to the stage where you’re all working together? Because it’s not a real it’s not a zero sum game. And I’ve spoken I’ve interviewed a lot of people that perhaps vendors at times wanna monopolize what they’re doing, which obviously generates risk, in terms of recent outages. But did you ever expect a world that we’d all be all the cloud providers will be working together in sort of this capacity?

Pradeep Vincent [01:05:37]:
Yeah. I think, you know, when we started OCI, probably not. Because at at that time, the notion of walled gardens was fairly entrenched. Everyone was comfortable with it. Everyone assumed that is how cloud should be or would be. They didn’t know of anything else. But it was very clear customers do not want that. Right? And we did believe that, you know, customer problems will eventually get solved.

Pradeep Vincent [01:06:02]:
So what we saw is that when when we started out as more enterprise customers started moving to the cloud, the need for the multi cloud started growing and the noise and and the the voice of the customers started growing as well. And, you know, it we we caught that pretty early and we essentially championed it. We we launched Azure interconnect, which is essentially the predecessor to the current, OCI database service at Azure where we essentially have OCI regions and Azure regions connected using a free interconnect, if you will. That’s essentially with partnership from Azure that that’s been around for many years. But that was a resounding success, which told us and Azure that customers really, really wanted this. And they wanted that, but then even further integration. That’s essentially what led to the, you know, the current Azure or, Oracle database at Azure product. Right? This is not something we foresaw, like, you know, when we started OCI, but it was clear that as we start as we saw more infrared adoption of the cloud, we started believing that this is this should happen, and this has to happen eventually for full fledged enterprise adoption of the cloud.

Karissa Breen [01:07:16]:
So it’s going back to being a founding member. And you said before that you beat Mahesh, so clearly you’ve got, the the pedigree to talk about this. Talk a little bit more about the OCR, like, Gen 1. My understanding of people internally, perhaps, in people in the industry is that it failed. Tell us more about the evolution now of the Gen 2 and the version of what’s what we can expect now.

Pradeep Vincent [01:07:38]:
I was not involved in gen 1, so I don’t have a lot of perspective of, what it was and, you know, what exactly happened. There was a whole bunch of services that had to be offered. And the very first version was essentially, hey. Let’s actually take those services and offer that in, you know, a data center that’s owned by Oracle. When we came along, you know, we essentially, you know, took a very different approach. And it was a success from a operational standpoint and launch velocity standpoint and addressing customer need, perspective. So it was pretty obvious later on that, like, hey. Let’s actually unify this thing and have a single unified cloud service, if you will.

Pradeep Vincent [01:08:20]:
That’s OCI as well as some of the higher level platform services. And we essentially embarked on a process to move many of those services on top of OCI. In some cases, we essentially substituted that with other OCI services. In other cases, we actually moved them and evolved them for in due course of time. So it’s you know, I think there there is a notion of gen 2, but it’s really the when when Larry talks about gen 2, not so much about gen 2 inside Oracle, it’s gen 2 of the industry itself.

Karissa Breen [01:08:51]:
Okay. So I’m gonna sort of switch gears slightly to adoption of OCI. Now I’ve spoken to multiple people at Oracle. I’ve got different versions. I’m keen to hear yours around probably the younger generation adopting OCI. So when I look around and I crowdsource information from people and I speak to your, you know, the the other cloud providers, it doesn’t appear that OCI has your, you know, your younger generation that’s a hard core fan. When I go to other sort of cloud conferences, I can really see that. So I really wanna understand.

Karissa Breen [01:09:19]:
I’ve spoken to people like Chris Chilai in the region that’s trying to, you know, get that adoption. So what would be your view in terms of, you know, maybe, embedding it into people’s sort of fabric in terms of OCI? It’s just not something that in terms of observation that I see in the market.

Pradeep Vincent [01:09:36]:
Yeah. I, you know, I think that’s a good question. I wanna translate younger participants or customers as, you know, perhaps developer focused. So, you know, I think, there are a couple of things that I would call out. You know, I think we we have a good developer platform story. Java is extremely popular with our developers as an example. And we have many OCI integrations with the Java itself. Obviously, Java is a standalone product.

Pradeep Vincent [01:10:03]:
To me, that is a appealing thing. I think, in some cases, I felt that folks don’t necessarily connect the dots between Oracle and Java, but they are, you know, quite integrated in the sense that, you know, Oracle plays a key role in the Java ecosystem and the evolution of Java and the optimizations of Java itself. On OCI, we have very tight integrations for some of the Java optimizations and so on and so forth. So that’s 1. The second, to me, it’s about, you know, being open. And I think that is a huge part of the focus as well where we are not necessarily saying, hey. You when you come to OCI, you should use OCI tools for anything else. Be what we want to do is essentially, you know, keep our services as open compatible as possible.

Pradeep Vincent [01:10:51]:
As an example, when we launched our streaming service, we have the choice of having our own APIs, which we could have optimized and we did optimize. But we also wanted to support Kafka, which is a open standard for streaming. Right? And what that meant was, you know, any customer developer can come in and use whatever tools they want and whatever existing technology or other technology or maybe even competitors technology they want it in conjuncture with OCI services. And same thing for monitoring and logging where we are open standard compatible so that, you know, when when, OCI generated logs, you can actually take it to a third party application or, you know, even a competitor and then do log analytics on top of it. And that’s perfectly fine. We also have a log analytic service, but you can take it somewhere else. So to me, that’s a, you know, important part of the developer appeal. And the third one, I think, is essentially around more developer friendly tools.

Pradeep Vincent [01:11:51]:
And that is something we are working on. And, you know, I think if you look at it, I think that’s a that’s a area that’s a big focus area for us. We have ways to go. But, you know, my my belief is that as we start, you know, attacking all three fronts, you’re gonna see transformation of that. I do believe that, you know, I think in many cases, if you look at, like, you know, some of the other hyperscalers, they started off with the developer appeal and then they started appealing. Okay. Let me figure out how to appeal to the CIOs and the CISOs. Our focus, you know, while we have Java and while we have open standards to make sure that, you know, developers can use it how we want.

Pradeep Vincent [01:12:29]:
Our primary focus initially at least was around, you know, how do you actually make sure that tough, requirements of the enterprises are solved. And now I think, you know, to a large extent, I think we have we have that cover and, you know, it’s clearly showing up in the form of customer demand. We are essentially going lower down the stack in terms of, you know, making it more appealing, if you will, in many different ways to the developers. By the way, AI is another area I would call out where almost AI training, customers, they actually, like, you know, really love it. You may not see it very clearly in terms of, you know, in in the open, but, like, you know, I personally interact with developers quite a bit. And there’s a whole bunch of aspects around that that they really like in terms of using OCI AI infrastructure.

Karissa Breen [01:13:16]:
Moving forward now, what can people expect to see now from OCI?

Pradeep Vincent [01:13:20]:
Look. I think the way I look at us, we have a very successful strategy. It’s resonating customers with, you know, strong security, with multi cloud and dedicated regions and alloy and AI infrastructure and the overall focus on, AI. I think in the next year, you’re essentially gonna be we’re gonna see a continued trajectory of that, right, in many different ways. And and there’s a lot of work to be done in many of these areas. As Safra mentioned in the early on his call, there’s, you know, there’s a lot of demand for it. So, you know, our primary focus is essentially to move as fast as possible and deliver.

Karissa Breen [01:13:57]:
And there you have it. This is KB on the go. Stay tuned for more.