(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to theCUBE everybody. This is Dave Vellante. We've been covering the transformation of Oracle Consulting and really its rebirth. And I'm here with Chris Fox, who's the Group Vice President for Enterprise Cloud Architects and Chief Technologist for the North America Tech Cloud at Oracle. Chris, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Thanks Dave, glad to be here. >> So I love this title. I mean years ago there was no such thing as a Cloud Architect, certainly there were Chief Technologists but so you are really-- Those are your peeps, is that right? >> That's right. That's right. That's really, my team and I, that's all we do. So our focus is really helping our customers take this journey from when they were on premise to really transforming with cloud. And when we think about cloud, really for us, it's a combination. It's our hybrid cloud which happens to be on premise and then of course the true public cloud like most people are familiar with. So, very exciting journey and frankly I've seen just a lot of success for our customers. >> interesting that you hear conversations like, "Oh every company is a software company" which by the way we believe. Everybody's got a some kind of SaaS offering, but it really used to be the application, heads within organizations that had a lot of the power, still do, but of course you have cloud native developers etc. And now you have this new role of Cloud Architects, they've got to align, essentially have to provide infrastructure and capabilities so that you can be agile from a development standpoint. I wonder if you can talk about that dynamic of how the roles have evolved in the last several years. >> Yeah, you know it's very interesting now because as Oracle we spend a lot of our time with those applications owners. As a leader in SaaS right now, SaaS ERP, HCM. You just start walking through the list, they're transforming their organizations. They're trying to make their lives, much more efficient, better for their employees or customers etc. On the other side of the spectrum, we have the cloud native development teams and they're looking at better ways to deploy, develop applications, roll out new features at scale, roll out new pipelines. But Dave, what I think we're seeing at Oracle though, because we're so connected with SaaS and then we're also connected with the traditional applications that have run the business for years, the legacy applications that have been servicing us for 20 years and then the cloud native developers. So what my team and I are constantly focused on now is things like digital transformation and really wiring up all three of these across. So if we think of like a customer outcome, like I want to have a package delivered to me from a retailer, that actual process flow could touch a brand new cloud native site from e-commerce. It could touch essentially, maybe a traditional application that used to be on prem that's now on the cloud and then it might even use some new SaaS application maybe for maybe a procurement process or delivery vehicle and scheduling. So what my team does, we actually connect all three. So, what I always mention to my team and all of our customers, we have to be able to service all three of those constituents and really think about process flows. So I take the cloud native developer, we help them become efficient. We take the person who's been running that traditional application and we help them become more efficient. And then we have the SaaS applications which are now rolling out new features on a quarterly basis and the whole new delivery model. But the real key is connecting all three of these into a business process flow that makes the customer's life much more efficient. >> So what you're saying is that these Cloud Architects and the sort of modern day Chief Technologists, they're multi tool players. It's not just about cloud, it's about connecting that cloud to, whether the system's on prem or other clouds. Is that right? >> It is. You know and one thing that we're seeing too Dave, is that we know it's multi cloud. So it could be Oracle's cloud, hopefully it's always Oracle's cloud, but we don't expect that. So as architects, we certainly have to take a look at what is it that we're trying to optimize? What's the outcome we're looking for? And then be able to work across these teams, and I think what makes it probably most fun and exciting, on one day in one morning, let's say, you could be talking to the cloud native developer team. Talking about Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, all the great technologies that help us roll out applications and features faster. Then you'll go to a traditional, maybe Oracle E-Business suite job. This is something that's been running on prem maybe for 20 years, and it's really still servicing the business. And then you have another team that maybe is rolling out a SaaS application from Oracle. And literally all three teams are connected by a process flow. So the question is, how do we optimize all three on behalf of either the customer, the employee, the supplier? And that's really the job for the Oracle Cloud Architect. Which I think, really good, that's different than the other cloud because for the most part, we actually do offer SaaS, we offer platform, we offer infrastructure and we offer the hybrid cloud on prem. So it's a common conversation. How do we optimize all these? >> So I want to get into this cloud conversation a little bit. You guys are used to this term last mover advantage. I got to ask you about it. How is being last an advantage? But let me start there. >> Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, so frankly speaking I think that-- So Oracle has been developing, what's interesting is our SaaS applications for many, many, many years, and where we began this journey is looking at SaaS. And then we started with platform. Right after that we started saying how do we augment SaaS? This OCI for us or Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Gen 2 could be considered a last mover advantage. What does that mean? We join this cloud journey later than the others but because of our heritage, of the workloads we've been running, right? We've been running enterprise scale workloads for years, the cloud itself has been phenomenal, right? It's easier to use, pay for what you use, elastic etc. These are all phenomenal features, fell. And based on our enterprise heritage it wasn't delivering resilience at scale, even for like the traditional applications we've known on prem forever. People always say, "Chris we want to get out of the data center. "We're going zero data center." And I always say, "Well, how are you going to handle that back office stuff?" Right? The stuff that's really big, it's cranky, doesn't handle just, instances dying or things going away too easily. It needs predictable performance. It needs scale. It absolutely needs security and ultimately a lot of these applications truly have relied on an Oracle database. The Oracle database has it's own specific characteristics that it needs to run really well. So we actually looked at the cloud and we said, let's take the first generation clouds, which are doing great, but let's add the features that specifically, a lot of times, the Oracle workload needed in order to run very well and in a cost effective manner. So that's what we mean when we say, last mover advantage. We said, let's take the best of the clouds that are out there today. Let's look at the workloads that, frankly Oracle runs and has been running for years, what our customers needed and then let's build those features right into this next version of the cloud, we can service the enterprise. So our goal, honestly what's interesting is, even that first discussion we had about cloud native, and legacy applications, and also the new SaaS applications, we built a cloud that handles all three use cases, at scale resiliently in a very secure manner, and I don't know of any other cloud that's handling those three use cases, all in, we'll call it the same tendency for us at Oracle. >> Let's unpack that a little bit and get into, sort of, trying to understand the strategy and I want to frame it. So you were the last really to enter the cloud market, let's sort of agree on that. >> Chris: Yup. >> And you kind of built it from the ground up. And it's just too expensive now. The CapEx required to get into cloud is just astronomical. Now, even for a SaaS company, there's no sense. If you're a new SaaS company, you're going to run it in the cloud. Somebody else's cloud. There are some SaaS companies that of course run their own data centers but they're fewer and further between. But so, and I've also said that your advantage relative to the hyper scalers is that you've got this big SaaS estate and it somewhat insulates you, actually more than somewhat. Largely insulates you from the race to the bottom. On compute and storage, cost per bit kind of thing. But my question is, why was it was it important for Oracle, and is it important for Oracle and it's customers, that it had to participate in IaaS and PaaS and SaaS? Why not just the last two layers of that? What does that give you from a strategic advantage standpoint and what does that do for your customer? >> Yeah, great question. So the number one reason why we needed to have all three was that we have so many customers to today that are in a data center. They're running a lot of our workloads on premise and they absolutely are trying to find a better way to deliver a lower cost services to their customers. And, so, we couldn't just say let's just-- everyone needs to just become net new. Everyone just needs to ditch the old and go just to brand new alone. Too hard, too expensive at times. So we said, let's give us customers the ultimate amount of choice. So, let's even go back again to that developer conversation in SaaS. If you didn't have IaaS, we couldn't help customers achieve a zero data center strategy with their traditional application. We'll call it Peoplesoft, or JD Edwards or E-Business suite or even-- there's some massive applications that are running on the Oracle cloud right now that are custom applications built on the Oracle database. What they want is they said, "Give me the lowest ASP to get predictable performance IaaS" I'll run my app's tier on this. Number two, give me a platform service for database 'cause frankly, I don't really want to run your database, like, with all the manual effort, I want someone to automate, patching, scale up and down, and all these types of features like the pilot should have given us. And then number three, I do want SaaS over time. So we spend a lot of time with our customers, really saying, "how do I take this traditional application, run it on IaaS and PaaS?" And then number two, "let's modernize it at scale." Maybe I want to start peeling off functionality and running them as cloud native services right alongside, right? That's something again, that we're doing at scale, and other people are having a hard time running these traditional workloads on prem in the cloud. The second part is they say, "You know, I've got this legacy traditional ERP. Been servicing we well or maybe a supply chain system. Ultimately I want to get out of this. How do I get to SaaS?" And we say, "Okay, here's the way to do this. First, bring into the cloud, run it on IaaS and PaaS. And then selectively, I call it cloud slicing. Take a piece of functionality and put it into SaaS." For ERP, it might be something like start with GL, a new chart of accounts in ERP SaaS. And then slowly over a number of your journey as needed, adopt the next module. So this way, I mean, I'll just say this is the fun part of as an architect, our jobs, we're helping customers move to the cloud at scale, we're helping them do it at their rate, with whatever level of change they want. And when they're ready for SaaS, we're ready for them. And I would just say the other IaaS providers, here's the challenge we're seeing Dave, is that they're getting to the cloud, they're doing a little bit of modernization, but they want PaaS, they also want to ultimately get to SaaS, and frankly, those other clouds don't offer them. So they're kind of in this we're stuck on this lift and shift. But then we want to really move and modernize and go to SaaS. And I would say that's what Oracle is doing right now for enterprises. We're really helping them move these traditional workloads to the cloud IaaS and PaaS. And then number two, they're moving to SaaS when they're ready. And even when you get to SaaS, everyone says, "You know what, leave it as as vanilla as possible, but I want to make myself differentiated." In that case, again, IaaS and PaaS, coupled alongside a SaaS environment, you can build your specific differentiation. And then you leave the ERP pristine, so it can be upgraded constantly with no impact to your specific sidebar applications. So, I would say that the best clouds in the world, I mean, I think you're going to see a lot of the others are trying to, either SaaS providers trying to grow a PaaS, or maybe some of the IaaS players are trying to add SaaS. So, I think you're going to see this blending more and more because customers are asking for the flexibility For either or all three. But I will say that-- >> How can I get PaaS and SaaS-minus. >> Absolutely, I mean, what are you doing there? You're offering choice. There's not a question in my mind that Cisco is a huge customer of ours, they have a product that is one of their SaaS applications running Tetration on the Oracle Cloud. It actually doesn't run any Oracle. It's all cloud native applications. Natively built with a number of open source components. They run just IaaS. That's it, the Tetration product, and it runs fast. The Gen 2 cloud has a great architecture underneath it, flattened fast network. By far, for us, we feel like we really gotten into the guts of IaaS and made it run more efficiently. Other customers say, "I've got a huge Oracle footprint in the data center, help me get it out." So up to the cloud that they go, and they say I don't want just IaaS because that means I'm writing all the automation, like I have to manage all the patching. And this is where for us platform services really help because we give them the automation at scale, which allows their people to do other things, that may be more impactful for the business. >> I want to ask you about, the automation piece. And you guys have made the statement that your Gen 2 cloud is fundamentally different than how other clouds work, Gen 1 clouds. And the Gen 1 clouds which are evolving, the hyper scalars are evolving, but how is Oracle's Gen 2 cloud fundamentally different? >> Yeah. I think that one of the most basic elements of the cloud itself was that for us, we had to start with the security and the network. So if you imagine that those two components really, A, could dictate speed and performance, plus doing it in a secure fashion. The two things that you'll see an awful lot about for us, is that we've embedded not only security at every level. But we've even separated off what we call, every cloud, you have a number of compute instances and then you have storage, right? In the middle, you have a network. However, to become a cloud, and to offer the elastic scale and the multiple sharing of resources, you have to have something called a control plane. What we've done is we've actually extracted the control plane out into its own separate instance of a running machine. Other clouds actually have the control plane inside of there running compute cores. Now, what does that do? Well, the fact of the matter is, we assume that the control plane and the network should be completely separate from what you run on your cloud. So if you run a virtual machine, or if you run a bare metal instance, there's no Oracle software running on it. We actually don't trust customers, and we actually tell the customers don't trust us, either. So by separating out the control plane, and all the code that runs that environment off of the running machine, you get more cores meaning like you have-- There's no Oracle tax for running this environment. It's a separate conmputer for each one, the control plane. Number two, it's more secure. We actually don't have any running code on that machine, if you had a bare metal instance. So therefore, there's no way for one machine in the cloud to infect another machine if the control plane was compromised. The second part of the network, the guys who have been building this cloud, Don Johnson, a lot of the guys came from other clouds before and they said, "yYou know the one thing we have to do is make a we call it Flattened Fast Clause Network that really is never oversubscribed." So you'll constantly see and people always ask me same question, "Dave, why is the performance faster if its the same VM shape? "Like I don't understand why it's going faster, like high performance computing." And the reason again a lot of times is the network itself is that it's just not oversubscribed. It's constantly flowing all the data, there's no such thing as congestion on the network, which can happen. The last part, we actually added 52 terabytes of local storage to every one of those compute nodes. So therefore, there's a possibility you don't even have to traverse the network to do some really serious work on the local machine. So you add these together, the idea is make the network incredibly fast, separate out the control plane and run the software and security layer separate from the entire node where all the customers work is being done. Number three, give the customers more compute, by obviously having us offload it to a separate machine. And the last thing is put local storage and everything is what's called NVMe storage. Whether it's local or remote, everything's NVMe, though the IOPS we get are really off the charts. And again, it shows up in our benchmarks. >> Yeah, so you're getting, atomic access to memory. But in your control plane, you describe that control plane that's running. Sorry to geek out everybody. But I'm kind of curious, you know. You got me started, Chris. So that's control-- >> Yeah, that's good. >> the Oracle cloud or runs. Where's it live? >> It's essentially separated from the compute node. We actually have it in between, there's a compute node that all the work is done from the customer, could be on like a Kubernetes container or VM, whatever it might be. The control plane literally is separate. And it lives right next to the actual compute node the customer is using. So it's actually embedded on a SmartNIC, it's a completely different cores. It's a different chipset, different memory structure, everything. And it does two things. It helps us control what happens up in the customers compute nodes in VMs. And it also helps us virtualize the network down as well. So it literally, the control plane is separate and distinct. It's essentially a couple SmartNICS. >> And then how does Autonomous fit into this whole architecture? I'm speaking by the way for that description, I mean, it's nuanced, but it's important. I'm sure you having this conversation with a lot of cloud architects and chief technologists, they want to know this stuff, and they want to know how it works. And then, obviously, we'll talk about what the business impact is. But talk about Autonomous and where that fit. >> Yeah, so as Larry says that there are two products that really dictate the future of Oracle and our success with our customers. Number one is ERP-SaaS. The second one is Autonomous Database. So the Autonomous Database, what we've done is really taken a look at all the runtime operations of an Oracle database. So tuning, patching, securing all these different features, and what we've done is taken the best of the Oracle database, the best of something called Exadata which we run on the cloud, which really helps a lot of our customers. And then we've wrapped it with a set of automation and security tools to help it really manage itself, tune itself, patch itself, scale up and down, independent between compute and storage. So, why that's important though, is that really our goal is to help people run the Oracle database as they have for years but with far less effort, and then even not only far less effort, hopefully, a machine plus man, out of the equation we always talk about is man plus machine is greater than man alone. So being assisted by artificial intelligence and machine learning to perform those database operations, we should provide a better service to our customers with far less costs. >> Yeah, the greatest chess player in the world is a combination of man and machine, you know that? >> You know what? It makes sense. It makes sense because, there's a number of things that we can do as humans that are just too difficult to program. And then there are other things where machines are just phenomenal, right? I mean, there's no-- Think of Google Maps, you ask it wherever you want to go. And it'll tell you in a fraction of a second, not only the best route, but based on traffic from maybe the last couple of years. right now, we don't have autonomous cars, right, that are allowed to at least drive fully autonomous yet, it's coming. But in the meantime, a human could really work through a lot of different scenarios it was hard to find a way to do that in autonomous driving. So I do believe that it's going to be a great combination. Our hope and goal is that the people who have been running Oracle databases, how can we help them do it with far less effort and maybe spend more time on what the data can do for the organization, right? Improve customer experience, etc. Versus maybe like, how do I spin up a table? One of our customers is a huge consumer. They said, "our goal is how do we reduce the time to first table?" Meaning someone in the business just came up with an idea? How do I reduce the time to first table. For some of our customers, it can take months. I mean, if you were going to put in a new server, find a place in the data center, stand up a database, make the security controls, right and etc. With the autonomous database, I could spin one up right here, for us and, and we could start using it and it would be secure, which is utmost and paramount. It would scale up and down, meaning like just based on workload, as I load data into it, it would tune itself, it would help us with the idea of running more efficiently, which means less cores, which means also less cost. And then the constant security patches that may come up because of different threats or new features. It would do that potentially on its own if you allow it. Obviously some people want to watch you know what exactly it's going to do first. Do regression testing. But it's an exciting product because I've been working with the Oracle database for about 20 years now. And to see it run in this manner, it's just phenomenal. And I think that's the thing, a lot of the database teams have seen. Pretty amazing work. >> So I love this conversation. It's hardcore computer science, architecture, engineering. But now let's end with by up leveling this. We've been talking, a lot about Oracle Consulting. So let's talk about the business impact. So you go into customers, you talk to the cloud architects, the chief technologist, you pass that test. Now you got to deliver the business impact. Where does Oracle consulting fit with regard to that, and maybe you could talk about sort of where you guys want to take this thing. >> Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so, the cloud is great set of technologies, but where Oracle consulting is really helping us deliver is in the outcome. One of the things I think that's been fantastic working with the Oracle consulting team is that cloud is new. For a lot of customers who've been running these environments for a number of years, there's always some fear and a little bit of trepidation saying, "How do I learn this new cloud?" I mean, the workloads, we're talking about deeper, like tier zero, tier one, tier two, and all the way up to Dev and Test and DR, Oracle Consulting does really, a couple of things in particular, number one, they start with the end in mind. And number two, that they start to do is they really help implement these systems. And, there's a lot of different assurances that we have that we're going to get it done on time, and better be under budget, 'cause ultimately, again, that's something that's really paramount for us. And then the third part of it a lot of it a lot of times is run books, right? We actually don't want to just live at our customers environments. We want to help them understand how to run this new system. So training and change management. A lot of times Oracle Consulting is helping with run books. We usually will, after doing it the first time, we'll sit back and let the customer do it the next few times, and essentially help them through the process. And our goal at that point is to leave, only if the customer wants us to but ultimately, our goal is to implement it, get it to go live on time, and then help the customer learn this journey to the cloud. And without them, frankly, I think these systems are sometimes too complex and difficult to do on your own, maybe the first time especially because like I say, they're closing the books, they might be running your entire supply chain. They run your entire HR system or whatever they might be. Too important to leave to chance. So they really help us with helping the customer become live and become very competent and skilled, because they can do it themselves. >> But Chris, we've covered the gamut. We're talking about, architecture, went to NVMe. We're talking about the business impact, all of your automation, run books, loved it. Loved the conversation, but to leave it right there but thanks so much for coming on theCUBE and sharing your insights, great stuff. >> Absolutely, thanks Dave, and thank you for having me on. >> All right, you're welcome. And thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE. We are covering the Oracle North America Consulting transformation and its rebirth in this digital event. Keep it right there. We'll be right back. (upbeat music)

>>from the Cube Studios in Palo Alto and Boston. It's the Cube covering empowering the autonomous enterprise brought to you by >>Oracle Consulting. Everybody, this is Dave Vellante. We've been covering the transformation of Oracle consulting and really, it's rebirth. And I'm here with Chris Fox, who's the group vice president for Enterprise Cloud Architects and chief technologist for the North America Tech Cloud at Oracle. Chris, thanks so much for coming on the Cube. >>Thanks too great to be here, >>So I love this title. You know, years ago, this thing is a cloud architect. Certainly there were chief technologist, but so you really that's those are your peeps, Is that right? >>That's right. That's right. That's really in my team. And I That's all we dio. So our focus is really helping our customers take this journey from when they were on premise. You really transforming with cloud? And when we think about Cloud, really, for us, it's a combination. It's it's our hybrid cloud, which happens to be on premise. And then, of course, the true public cloud, like most people, are familiar with so very exciting journey and frankly, of seeing just a lot of success for our customers. You know what I think we're seeing at Oracle, though? Because we're so connected with SAS. And then we're also connected with the traditional applications that have run the business for years. The legacy applications that have been, you know, servicing us for 20 years and then the cloud native developers. So with my team and I are constantly focused on now is things like digital transformation and really wiring up all three of these across. So if we think of, like a customer outcome like I want to have a package delivered to me from a retailer that actual process flow could touch a brand new cognitive site of e commerce it could touch essentially maybe a traditional application that used to be on Prem that's now in the cloud. And then it might even use new SAS application, maybe for maybe Herman process or delivery vehicle and scheduling. So when my team does, we actually connect all three. So what? I was mentioned, too. In my team and all of our customers, we have field service, all three of those constituents. And if you think about process flows, so I take a cloud. Native developer we help them become efficient. We take the person use to run in a traditional application, and we help them become more efficient. And then we have the SAS applications, which are now rolling out new features on a quarterly basis and the whole new delivery model. But the real key is connecting all three of these into your business process flow. That makes the customers life much more vision. >>So I want to get into this cloud conversations that you guys are using this term last mover advantage. I asked you last I was being last, You know, an advantage. But let me start there. >>People always say, You know, of course, we want to get out of the data center. We're going zero data center and how we say, Well, how are you going to handle that back office stuff, right? The stuff that's really big Frankie, um, doesn't handle just, you know, instances dying or things going away too easily. It needs predictable performance in the scale. It absolutely needs security. And ultimately, you know, a lot of these applications truly have relied on Oracle database. The Oracle database has its own specific characteristics that it means to run really well. So we actually looked at the cloud and we said, Let's take the first generation clouds but you're doing great But let's add the features that specifically a lot of times the Oracle workload needed in order to run very well and in a cost effective manner. So that's what we mean when we say last mover advantage, We said, Let's take the best of the clouds that are out there today. Let's look at the workloads that, frankly, Oracle runs and has been running for years. What are customers needed? And then let's build those features right into this, uh, this next version of the cloud we service the Enterprise. So our goal, honestly, which is interesting is even that first discussion we had about cloud, native and legacy applications and also the new SAS applications. We built a cloud that handles all three use cases at scale resiliently in very secure manner, and I don't know of any other cloud that's handling those three use cases all in. We'll call it the same pendency process. Oracle >>Mike witnesses. Why was it important for Oracle? And is it important for Oracle on its customers that have to participate in IAS and Pass and SAS. Why not just the last two layers of that? Um What does that mean from a strategic advantage standpoint? What does that do for >>you? Yeah, great question. So the number one reason why we needed to have all three was that we have so many customers to today are in a data center. They're running a lot of our workloads on premise, and they absolutely are trying to find a better way to deliver lower cost services to their customers. And so we couldn't just say, Let's just everyone needs to just become net new. Everyone just needs to ditch the old and go just a brand new alone. Too hard, too expensive at times. So we said, You know, let's kill us customers the ultimate amount of choice. So let's even go back against that developer conversation and SAS Um, if you didn't have eyes, we couldn't help customers achieve a zero data center strategy with their traditional applications will call it PeopleSoft or JD Edwards, Revisit Suite or even. There's some massive applications that are running on the Oracle cloud right now that are custom applications built on the Oracle database. What they want is, they said, Give me the lowest. Possibly a predictable performance. I as I'll run my app steer on this number two. Give me a platform service for database because, frankly, I don't really want to run your database. Like with all the manual effort. I want someone automate, patching scale up and down and all these types of features like should have given us. And then number three. You know, I do want SAS over time. So we spend a lot of time with our customers really saying, How do I take this traditional application, Run it on eyes and has and the number two Let's modernize it at scale. Maybe I want to start peeling off functionality and running in the cloud Native services right alongside, right? That's something again that we're doing at scale. And other people are having a hard time running these traditional workloads on Prem in the cloud. The second part is they say, you know, I've got this legacy traditional your api been servicing we well, or maybe a supply chain system ultimately want to get out of this. How do I get to SAS? You say Okay, here's the way to do this. First bring into the cloud running on IAS and pass and then selectively, I call it cloud slicing. Take a piece of functionality and put it into SAS. We're helping customers move to the cloud at scale. We're helping them do it at their rate, with whatever level of change they want. And when they're ready for SAS, we're ready for them. >>How does autonomous fit into this whole architecture Wait for that? That that description? I mean, it's a it's nuanced, but it's important. I'm sure you haven't discussed this conversation with a lot of cloud architects and chief technologist. They want to know this stuff. They want to know how it works. Um, you know, we will talk about what the business impact is, but but yeah, it's not about autonomous and where that fits. >>So the autonomous database, what we've done is really big. And look at all the runtime operations of an Oracle database. So tuning, patching, sparing all these different features and what we've done is taken the best of the Oracle database the best of something called Exit Data right, which we run in the cloud which really helps a lot of our customers. And then we wrapped it with a set of automation and security tools to help it. Really, uh, managing self tune itself. Patch itself scale up and down, independent between compute and storage. So why that's important, though, is that it? Really? Our goal is to help people run the Oracle databases they have for years, but with far less effort and then even not letting far less effort. Hopefully, you know a machine. Last man out of the equation we always talk about is your man plus machine is greater than man alone, so being assisted by, um, artificial intelligence and machine learning to perform those database operations, we should provide a better service to our customers. Far less paths are hoping goal is that people have been running Oracle databases, you know, How can we help them do it with far less effort and maybe spend more time on what the data can do for the organization? Right? Improve customer experience at Centra versus maybe like Hana Way. How do I spin up the table? It >>so talk about the business impact. So you go into customers, you talk to the the cloud Architects, the chief technologist. You pass that test now, you got to deliver the business impact. We're is Oracle Consulting fit with regard to that? And maybe you could talk about that where you were You guys want to take this thing? >>Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so you know, the cloud is a great set of technologies, but where Oracle Consulting is really helping us deliver is in, um, you know, one of the things I think that's been fantastic working with the Oracle consulting team is that, you know, Cloud is new for a lot of customers who've been running these environments for a number of years. There's always some fear and a little bit of trepidation saying, How do I learn this new cloud of the workloads? We're talking about David, like tier zero, tier one, tier two and all the way up to Dev and Test and, er, um, Oracle consulting. This really couple things in particular, Number one, they start with the end in mind, and number two that they start to do is they really help implement these systems. And, you know, there's a lot of different assurances that we have that we're going to get it done on time and better be under budget because ultimately, you know, again, that's a something is really paramount for us and then the third part of it. But sometimes a run book, right? We actually don't want to just live in our customer's environments. We want to help them understand how to run this new system. So training and change management. A lot of times, Oracle Consulting is helping with run books. We usually well, after doing it the first time. We'll sit back and say, Let the customer do in the next few times and essentially help them through the process. And our goal at that point is to leave only if the customer wants us to. But ultimately our goal is to implemented, get it to go live on time and then help the customer learn this journey to the cloud and without them. Frankly, uh, you know, I think these systems were sometimes too complex and difficult to do on your own. Maybe the first time, especially cause I could say they're closing the books. They might be running your entire supply chain. They run your entire HR system, whatever they might be, uh, too important, leading a chance. So they really help us with helping a customer become live and become very confident. Skilled. They could do themselves >>of the conversation. We have to leave it right there. But thanks so much for coming on the Cube and sharing your insights. Great stuff. >>Absolutely. Thanks for having me on. >>All right. You're welcome. And thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Volante for the Cube. We are covering the oracle of North American Consulting. Transformation. And it's rebirth in this digital event. Keep it right there. We'll be right back.

>> Narrator: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, it's theCUBE! Covering empowering the autonomous enterprise. Brought to you by ORACLE Consulting. >> Back to theCUBE everybody, this is Dave Vellante. We've been covering the transformation of ORACLE Consulting, and really it's rebirth, and I'm here with Chris Fox, who's the Group Vice President for Enterprise Cloud Architects and Chief Technologist for the North America Tech Cloud at ORACLE. Chris, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Thanks Dave, glad to be here. >> So, I love this title. I mean, years ago, there was no such thing as a cloud architect. Certainly there were chief technologists, but so, you are really, those are your peeps, is that right? >> That's right, that's right. That's really my team and I, that's all we do. So, our focus is really helping our customers take this journey from when they were on-premise to really transforming with cloud, and when we think about cloud, really, for us, it's a combination. It's our hybrid cloud, which happens to be on-premise, and then, of course, the true public cloud, like most people are familiar with. So, very exciting journey and, frankly, I've seen just a lot of success for our customers. You know, Dave, what I think we're seeing at ORACLE though, because we're so connected with SaaS, and then we're also connected with the traditional applications that have run the business for years, the legacy applications that have been, you know, servicing us for 20 years, and then the cloud needed developers. So, what my team and I are constantly focused on now is things like digital transformation and really wiring up all three of these across. So, if we think of, like, a customer outcome like I want to have a package delivered to me from a retailer, that actual process flow could touch a brand new cloud-native site from eCommerce, it could touch, essentially, maybe a traditional application that used to be on-prem that's now on the cloud, and then it might even use a new SaaS application, maybe, for maybe a permit process or delivery vehicle and scheduling. So, what my team does, we actually connect all three. So, what I always mention to my team and all of our customers, we have to be able to service all three of those constituents and really think about process flows. So, I take the cloud-native developer, we help them become efficient. We take the person who's been running that traditional application and we help them become more efficient, and then we have the SaaS applications, which are now rolling out new features on a quarterly basis and it's a whole new delivery model, but the real key is connecting all three of these into a business process flow that makes the customer's life much more efficient. People always say, you know, Chris, we want to get out of the data center, we're going zero data center, and I always say, well, how are you going to handle that back office stuff? Right? The stuff that's really big, it's cranky, doesn't handle just, you know, instances dying or things going away too easily. It needs predictable performance, it needs scale, it absolutely needs security, and ultimately, you know, a lot of these applications truly have relied on an ORACLE database. The ORACLE database has its own specific characteristics that it needs to run really well. So, we actually looked at the cloud and we said, let's take the first generation clouds, which are doing great, but let's add the features that specifically, a lot of times, the ORACLE workload needed in order to run very well and in a cost effective manner. So, that's what we mean when we say last mover advantage. We said, let's take the best of the clouds that are out there today, let's look at the workloads that, frankly, ORACLE runs and has been running for years, what our customers needed, and then let's build those features right into this next version of the cloud which can service the enterprise. So, our goal, honestly, which is interesting, is even that first discussion we had about cloud-native and legacy applications and also the new SaaS applications, we built a cloud that handles all three use cases at scale, resiliently, in a very secure manner, and I don't know of any other cloud that's handling those three use cases all in, we'll call it the same tendency for us at ORACLE. >> My question is why was it important for ORACLE, and is it important for ORACLE and its customers, to participate in IaaS and PaaS and SaaS? Why not just the last two layers of that? What does that give you from a strategic advantage standpoint and what does that do for your customer? >> Yeah, great question. So, the number one reason why we needed to have all three was that we have so many customers who, today, are in a data center. They're running a lot of our workloads on-premise and they absolutely are trying to find a better way to deliver lower-cost services to their customers and so we couldn't just say, let's just, everyone needs to just become net new, everyone just needs to ditch the old and go just to brand-new alone. Too hard, too expensive, at times. So we said, you know, let's give us customers the ultimate amount of choice. So, let's even go back again to that developer conversation in SaaS. If you didn't have IaaS, we couldn't help customers achieve a zero data center strategy with their traditional application, we'll call it PeopleSoft or JD Edwards or E-Business Suite or even, there's some massive applications that are running on the ORACLE cloud right now that are custom applications built on the ORACLE database. What they want is they said, give me the lowest cost but yet predictable performance IaaS. I'll run my apps tier on this. Number two, give me a platform service for database, 'cause frankly, I don't really want to run your database, like, with all the menial effort. I want someone to automate patching, scale up and down, and all these types of features like the cloud should have given us. And then number three, I do want SaaS over time. So, we spend a lot of time with our customers really saying, how do I take this traditional application, run it on IaaS and PaaS, and then number two, let's modernize it at scale. Maybe I want to start peeling off functionality and running them as cloud-native services right alongside, right? That's something, again, that we're doing at scale and other people are having a hard time running these traditional workloads on-prem in the cloud. The second part is they say, you know, I've got this legacy traditional ERP. It's been servicing me well, or maybe a supply chain system. Ultimately I want to get out of this. How do I get to SaaS? And we say, okay, here's the way to do this. First, bring it to the cloud, run it on IaaS and PaaS, and then selectively, I call it cloud slicing, take a piece of functionality and put it into SaaS. We're helping customers move to the cloud at scale. We're helping 'em do it at their rate, with whatever level of change they want, and when they are ready for SaaS, we're ready for them. >> And how does autonomous fit into this whole architecture? Thank you, by the way, for that description. I mean, it's nuanced but it's important. I'm sure you're having this conversation with a lot of cloud architects and chief technologists. They want to know this stuff, and they want to know how it works. And then, obviously, we'll talk about what the business impact is, but talk about autonomous and where that fit. >> So, the autonomous database, what we've done is really taken a look at all the runtime operations of an ORACLE database, so tuning, patching, securing, all these different features, and what we've done is taken the best of the ORACLE database, the best of something called Exadata, right, which we run on the cloud, which really helps a lot of our customers, and then we've wrapped it with a set of automation and security tools to help it really manage itself, tune itself, patch itself, scale up and down independent between computant storage. So, why that's important though is that it really, our goal is to help people run the ORACLE database as they have for years but with far less effort, and then even not only far less effort, hopefully, you know, a machine plus man, kind of the equation we always talk about is man plus machine is greater than man alone. So, being assisted by artificial intelligence and machine learning to perform those database operations, we should provide a better service to our customers with far less cost. Our hope and goal is that people have been running ORACLE databases. How can we help them do it with far less effort, and maybe spend more time on what the data can do for the organization, right? Improve customer experience, etc. Versus maybe, like, how do I spin up (breaks up). >> So, let's talk about the business impact. So, you go into customers, you talk to the cloud architects, the chief technologists, you pass that test. Now you got to deliver the business impact. Where does ORACLE Consulting fit with regard to that? And maybe you could talk about where you guys want to take this thing. >> Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the cloud is great set of technologies, but where ORACLE Consulting is really helping us deliver is in the outcome. One of the things, I think, that's been fantastic working with the ORACLE Consulting team is that, you know, cloud is new. For a lot of customers who've been running these environments for a number of years, there's always some fear and a little bit of trepidation saying, how do I learn this new cloud? I mean, the workloads we're talking about, Dave, are like tier zero, tier one, tier two and, you know, all the way up to DEV and TEST and DR. ORACLE Consulting does really couple of things in particular. Number one, they start with the end in mind, and number two that they start to do, is they really help implement these systems and there's a lot of different assurances that we have that we're going to get it done on time and better be under budget, 'cause ultimately, again, that's something that's really paramount for us. And then the third part of it, a lot of times it's runbooks, right? We actually don't want to just live in our customers' environments. We want to help them understand how to run this new system, so in training and change management, a lot of times ORACLE Consulting is helping with runbooks. We usually will, after doing it the first time, we'll sit back and let the customer do it the next few times and essentially help them through the process, and our goal at that point is to leave. Only if the customer wants us to, but ultimately our goal is to implement it, get it to go live on time, and then help the customer learn this journey to the cloud. And without them, frankly, I think these systems are sometimes too complex and difficult to do on your own maybe the first time, especially 'cause like I say, they're closing the books. They might be running your entire supply chain. They run your entire HR system or whatever they might be. Too important to leave to chance. So, they really help us with helping the customer become live and become very confident and skilled 'cause they can do it themselves. >> Well Chris, we've covered the gamut. Loved the conversation. We'll have to leave it right there, but thanks so much for coming on theCUBE and sharing your insights. Great stuff. >> Absolutely, thanks Dave, and thanks for having me on. >> All right, you're welcome, and thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE. We are covering the ORACLE of North America Consulting transformation and its rebirth in this digital event. Keep it right there, we'll be right back.

>> Narrator: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, it's theCUBE! Covering empowering the autonomous enterprise. Brought to you by ORACLE Consulting. >> Back to theCUBE everybody, this is Dave Vellante. We've been covering the transformation of ORACLE Consulting, and really it's rebirth, and I'm here with Chris Fox, who's the Group Vice President for Enterprise Cloud Architects and Chief Technologist for the North America Tech Cloud at ORACLE. Chris, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Thanks Dave, glad to be here. >> So, I love this title. I mean, years ago, there was no such thing as a cloud architect. Certainly there were chief technologists, but so, you are really, those are your peeps, is that right? >> That's right, that's right. That's really my team and I, that's all we do. So, our focus is really helping our customers take this journey from when they were on-premise to really transforming with cloud, and when we think about cloud, really, for us, it's a combination. It's our hybrid cloud, which happens to be on-premise, and then, of course, the true public cloud, like most people are familiar with. So, very exciting journey and, frankly, I've seen just a lot of success for our customers. You know, Dave, what I think we're seeing at ORACLE though, because we're so connected with SaaS, and then we're also connected with the traditional applications that have run the business for years, the legacy applications that have been, you know, servicing us for 20 years, and then the cloud needed developers. So, what my team and I are constantly focused on now is things like digital transformation and really wiring up all three of these across. So, if we think of, like, a customer outcome like I want to have a package delivered to me from a retailer, that actual process flow could touch a brand new cloud-native site from eCommerce, it could touch, essentially, maybe a traditional application that used to be on-prem that's now on the cloud, and then it might even use a new SaaS application, maybe, for maybe a permit process or delivery vehicle and scheduling. So, what my team does, we actually connect all three. So, what I always mention to my team and all of our customers, we have to be able to service all three of those constituents and really think about process flows. So, I take the cloud-native developer, we help them become efficient. We take the person who's been running that traditional application and we help them become more efficient, and then we have the SaaS applications, which are now rolling out new features on a quarterly basis and it's a whole new delivery model, but the real key is connecting all three of these into a business process flow that makes the customer's life much more efficient. People always say, you know, Chris, we want to get out of the data center, we're going zero data center, and I always say, well, how are you going to handle that back office stuff? Right? The stuff that's really big, it's cranky, doesn't handle just, you know, instances dying or things going away too easily. It needs predictable performance, it needs scale, it absolutely needs security, and ultimately, you know, a lot of these applications truly have relied on an ORACLE database. The ORACLE database has its own specific characteristics that it needs to run really well. So, we actually looked at the cloud and we said, let's take the first generation clouds, which are doing great, but let's add the features that specifically, a lot of times, the ORACLE workload needed in order to run very well and in a cost effective manner. So, that's what we mean when we say last mover advantage. We said, let's take the best of the clouds that are out there today, let's look at the workloads that, frankly, ORACLE runs and has been running for years, what our customers needed, and then let's build those features right into this next version of the cloud which can service the enterprise. So, our goal, honestly, which is interesting, is even that first discussion we had about cloud-native and legacy applications and also the new SaaS applications, we built a cloud that handles all three use cases at scale, resiliently, in a very secure manner, and I don't know of any other cloud that's handling those three use cases all in, we'll call it the same tendency for us at ORACLE. >> My question is why was it important for ORACLE, and is it important for ORACLE and its customers, to participate in IaaS and PaaS and SaaS? Why not just the last two layers of that? What does that give you from a strategic advantage standpoint and what does that do for your customer? >> Yeah, great question. So, the number one reason why we needed to have all three was that we have so many customers who, today, are in a data center. They're running a lot of our workloads on-premise and they absolutely are trying to find a better way to deliver lower-cost services to their customers and so we couldn't just say, let's just, everyone needs to just become net new, everyone just needs to ditch the old and go just to brand-new alone. Too hard, too expensive, at times. So we said, you know, let's give us customers the ultimate amount of choice. So, let's even go back again to that developer conversation in SaaS. If you didn't have IaaS, we couldn't help customers achieve a zero data center strategy with their traditional application, we'll call it PeopleSoft or JD Edwards or E-Business Suite or even, there's some massive applications that are running on the ORACLE cloud right now that are custom applications built on the ORACLE database. What they want is they said, give me the lowest cost but yet predictable performance IaaS. I'll run my apps tier on this. Number two, give me a platform service for database, 'cause frankly, I don't really want to run your database, like, with all the menial effort. I want someone to automate patching, scale up and down, and all these types of features like the cloud should have given us. And then number three, I do want SaaS over time. So, we spend a lot of time with our customers really saying, how do I take this traditional application, run it on IaaS and PaaS, and then number two, let's modernize it at scale. Maybe I want to start peeling off functionality and running them as cloud-native services right alongside, right? That's something, again, that we're doing at scale and other people are having a hard time running these traditional workloads on-prem in the cloud. The second part is they say, you know, I've got this legacy traditional ERP. It's been servicing me well, or maybe a supply chain system. Ultimately I want to get out of this. How do I get to SaaS? And we say, okay, here's the way to do this. First, bring it to the cloud, run it on IaaS and PaaS, and then selectively, I call it cloud slicing, take a piece of functionality and put it into SaaS. We're helping customers move to the cloud at scale. We're helping 'em do it at their rate, with whatever level of change they want, and when they are ready for SaaS, we're ready for them. >> And how does autonomous fit into this whole architecture? Thank you, by the way, for that description. I mean, it's nuanced but it's important. I'm sure you're having this conversation with a lot of cloud architects and chief technologists. They want to know this stuff, and they want to know how it works. And then, obviously, we'll talk about what the business impact is, but talk about autonomous and where that fit. >> So, the autonomous database, what we've done is really taken a look at all the runtime operations of an ORACLE database, so tuning, patching, securing, all these different features, and what we've done is taken the best of the ORACLE database, the best of something called Exadata, right, which we run on the cloud, which really helps a lot of our customers, and then we've wrapped it with a set of automation and security tools to help it really manage itself, tune itself, patch itself, scale up and down independent between computant storage. So, why that's important though is that it really, our goal is to help people run the ORACLE database as they have for years but with far less effort, and then even not only far less effort, hopefully, you know, a machine plus man, kind of the equation we always talk about is man plus machine is greater than man alone. So, being assisted by artificial intelligence and machine learning to perform those database operations, we should provide a better service to our customers with far less cost. Our hope and goal is that people have been running ORACLE databases. How can we help them do it with far less effort, and maybe spend more time on what the data can do for the organization, right? Improve customer experience, etc. Versus maybe, like, how do I spin up (breaks up). >> So, let's talk about the business impact. So, you go into customers, you talk to the cloud architects, the chief technologists, you pass that test. Now you got to deliver the business impact. Where does ORACLE Consulting fit with regard to that? And maybe you could talk about where you guys want to take this thing. >> Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the cloud is great set of technologies, but where ORACLE Consulting is really helping us deliver is in the outcome. One of the things, I think, that's been fantastic working with the ORACLE Consulting team is that, you know, cloud is new. For a lot of customers who've been running these environments for a number of years, there's always some fear and a little bit of trepidation saying, how do I learn this new cloud? I mean, the workloads we're talking about, Dave, are like tier zero, tier one, tier two and, you know, all the way up to DEV and TEST and DR. ORACLE Consulting does really couple of things in particular. Number one, they start with the end in mind, and number two that they start to do, is they really help implement these systems and there's a lot of different assurances that we have that we're going to get it done on time and better be under budget, 'cause ultimately, again, that's something that's really paramount for us. And then the third part of it, a lot of times it's runbooks, right? We actually don't want to just live in our customers' environments. We want to help them understand how to run this new system, so in training and change management, a lot of times ORACLE Consulting is helping with runbooks. We usually will, after doing it the first time, we'll sit back and let the customer do it the next few times and essentially help them through the process, and our goal at that point is to leave. Only if the customer wants us to, but ultimately our goal is to implement it, get it to go live on time, and then help the customer learn this journey to the cloud. And without them, frankly, I think these systems are sometimes too complex and difficult to do on your own maybe the first time, especially 'cause like I say, they're closing the books. They might be running your entire supply chain. They run your entire HR system or whatever they might be. Too important to leave to chance. So, they really help us with helping the customer become live and become very confident and skilled 'cause they can do it themselves. >> Well Chris, we've covered the gamut. Loved the conversation. We'll have to leave it right there, but thanks so much for coming on theCUBE and sharing your insights. Great stuff. >> Absolutely, thanks Dave, and thanks for having me on. >> All right, you're welcome, and thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE. We are covering the ORACLE of North America Consulting transformation and its rebirth in this digital event. Keep it right there, we'll be right back.