(upbeat music) >> On February 19th of this year, Barron's dropped an article declaring Oracle, a cloud giant and the article explained why the stock was a buy. Investors took notice and the stock ran up 18% over the next nine trading days and it peaked on March 9th, the day before Oracle announced its latest earnings. The company beat consensus earnings on both top-line and EPS last quarter, but investors, they did not like Oracle's tepid guidance and the stock pulled back. But it's still, as you can see, well above its pre-Barron's article price. What does all this mean? Is Oracle a cloud giant? What are its growth prospects? Now many parts of Oracle's business are growing including Fusion ERP, Fusion HCM, NetSuite, we're talking deep into the double digits, 20 plus percent growth. It's OnPrem legacy licensed business however, continues to decline and that moderates, the overall company growth because that OnPrem business is so large. So the overall Oracle's growing in the low single digits. Now what stands out about Oracle is it's recurring revenue model. That figure, the company says now it represents 73% of its revenue and that's going to continue to grow. Now two other things stood out on the earnings call to us. First, Oracle plans on increasing its CapEX by 50% in the coming quarter, that's a lot. Now it's still far less than AWS Google or Microsoft Spend on capital but it's a meaningful data point. Second Oracle's consumption revenue for Autonomous Database and Cloud Infrastructure, OCI or Oracle Cloud Infrastructure grew at 64% and 139% respectively and these two factors combined with the CapEX Spend suggest that the company has real momentum. I mean look, it's possible that the CapEx announcements maybe just optics in they're front loading, some spend to show the street that it's a player in cloud but I don't think so. Oracle's Safra Catz's usually pretty disciplined when it comes to it's spending. Now today on March 17th, Oracle announced updates towards Autonomous Data Warehouse and with me is David Floyer who has extensively researched Oracle over the years and today we're going to unpack the Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse, ADW announcement. What it means to customers but we also want to dig into Oracle's strategy. We want to compare it to some other prominent database vendors specifically, AWS and Snowflake. David Floyer, Welcome back to The Cube, thanks for making some time for me. >> Thank you Vellante, great pleasure to be here. >> All right, I want to get into the news but I want to start with this idea of the autonomous database which Oracle's announcement today is building on. Oracle uses the analogy of a self-driving car. It's obviously powerful metaphor as they call it the self-driving database and my takeaway is that, this means that the system automatically provisions, it upgrades, it does all the patching for you, it tunes itself. Oracle claims that all reduces labor costs or admin costs by 90%. So I ask you, is this the right interpretation of what Oracle means by autonomous database? And is it real? >> Is that the right interpretation? It's a nice analogy. It's a test to that analogy, isn't it? I would put it as the first stage of the Autonomous Data Warehouse was to do the things that you talked about, which was the tuning, the provisioning, all of that sort of thing. The second stage is actually, I think more interesting in that what they're focusing on is making it easy to use for the end user. Eliminating the requirement for IT, staff to be there to help in the actual using of it and that is a very big step for them but an absolutely vital step because all of the competition focusing on ease of use, ease of use, ease of use and cheapness of being able to manage and deploy. But, so I think that is the really important area that Oracle has focused on and it seemed to have done so very well. >> So in your view, is this, I mean you don't really hear a lot of other companies talking about this analogy of the self-driving database, is this unique? Is it differentiable for Oracle? If so, why, or maybe you could help us understand that a little bit better. >> Well, the whole strategy is unique in its breadth. It has really brought together a whole number of things together and made it of its type the best. So it has a single, whole number of data sources and database types. So it's got a very broad range of different ways that you can look at the data and the second thing that is also excellent is it's a platform. It is fully self provisioned and its functionality is very, very broad indeed. The quality of the original SQL and the query languages, etc, is very, very good indeed and it's a better agent to do joints for example, is excellent. So all of the building blocks are there and together with it's sharing of the same data with OLTP and inference and in memory data paces as well. All together the breadth of what they have is unique and very, very powerful. >> I want to come back to this but let's get into the news a little bit and the announcement. I mean, it seems like what's new in the autonomous data warehouse piece for Oracle's new tooling around four areas that so Andy Mendelsohn, the head of this group instead of the guy who releases his baby, he talked about four things. My takeaway, faster simpler loads, simplified transforms, autonomous machine learning models which are facilitating, What do you call it? Citizen data science and then faster time to insights. So tooling to make those four things happen. What's your take and takeaways on the news? >> I think those are all correct. I would add the ease of use in terms of being able to drag and drop, the user interface has been dramatically improved. Again, I think those, strategically are actually more important that the others are all useful and good components of it but strategically, I think is more important. There's ease of use, the use of apex for example, are more important. And, >> Why are they more important strategically? >> Because they focus on the end users capability. For example, one of other things that they've started to introduce is Python together with their spatial databases, for example. That is really important that you reach out to the developer as they are and what tools they want to use. So those type of ease of use things, those types of things are respecting what the end users use. For example, they haven't come out with anything like click or Tableau. They've left that there for that marketplace for the end user to use what they like best. >> Do you mean, they're not trying to compete with those two tools. They indeed had a laundry list of stuff that they supported, Talend, Tableau, Looker, click, Informatica, IBM, I had IBM there. So their claim was, hey, we're open. But so that's smart. That's just, hey, they realized that people use these tools. >> I'm trying to exclude other people, be a platform and be an ecosystem for the end users. >> Okay, so Mendelsohn who made the announcement said that Oracle's the smartphone of databases and I think, I actually think Alison kind of used that or maybe that was us planing to have, I thought he did like the iPhone of when he announced the exit data way back when the integrated hardware and software but is that how you see it, is Oracle, the smartphone of databases? >> It is, I mean, they are trying to own the complete stack, the hardware with the exit data all the way up to the databases at the data warehouses and the OLTP databases, the inference databases. They're trying to own the complete stack from top to bottom and that's what makes autonomy process possible. You can make it autonomous when you control all of that. Take away all of the requirements for IT in the business itself. So it's democratizing the use of data warehouses. It is pushing it out to the lines of business and it's simplifying it and making it possible to push out so that they can own their own data. They can manage their own data and they do not need an IT person from headquarters to help them. >> Let's stay in this a little bit more and then I want to go into some of the competitive stuff because Mendelsohn mentioned AWS several times. One of the things that struck me, he said, hey, we're basically one API 'cause we're doing analytics in the cloud, we're doing data in the cloud, we're doing integration in the cloud and that's sort of a big part of the value proposition. He made some comparisons to Redshift. Of course, I would say, if you can't find a workload where you beat your big competitor then you shouldn't be in this business. So I take those things with a grain of salt but one of the other things that caught me is that migrating from OnPrem to Oracle, Oracle Cloud was very simple and I think he might've made some comparisons to other platforms. And this to me is important because he also brought in that Gartner data. We looked at that Gardner data when they came out with it in the operational database class, Oracle smoked everybody. They were like way ahead and the reason why I think that's important is because let's face it, the Mission Critical Workloads, when you look at what's moving into AWS, the Mission Critical Workloads, the high performance, high criticality OLTP stuff. That's not moving in droves and you've made the point often that companies with their own cloud particularly, Oracle you've mentioned this about IBM for certain, DB2 for instance, customers are going to, there should be a lower risk environment moving from OnPrem to their cloud, because you could do, I don't think you could get Oracle RAC on AWS. For example, I don't think EXIF data is running in AWS data centers and so that like component is going to facilitate migration. What's your take on all that spiel? >> I think that's absolutely right. You all crown Jewels, the most expensive and the most valuable applications, the mission-critical applications. The ones that have got to take a beating, keep on taking. So those types of applications are where Oracle really shines. They own a very large high percentage of those Mission Critical Workloads and you have the choice if you're going to AWS, for example of either migrating to Oracle on AWS and that is frankly not a good fit at all. There're a lot of constraints to running large systems on AWS, large mission critical systems. So that's not an option and then the option, of course, that AWS will push is move to a Roller, change your way of writing applications, make them tiny little pieces and stitch them all together with microservices and that's okay if you're a small organization but that has got a lot of problems in its own, right? Because then you, the user have to stitch all those pieces together and you're responsible for testing it and you're responsible for looking after it. And that as you grow becomes a bigger and bigger overhead. So AWS, in my opinion needs to have a move towards a tier-one database of it's own and it's not in that position at the moment. >> Interesting, okay. So, let's talk about the competitive landscape and the choices that customers have. As I said, Mendelssohn mentioned AWS many times, Larry on the calls often take shy, it's a compliment to me. When Larry Ellison calls you out, that means you've made it, you're doing well. We've seen it over the years, whether it's IBM or Workday or Salesforce, even though Salesforce's big Oracle customer 'cause AWS, as we know are Oracle customer as well, even though AWS tells us they've off called when you peel the onion >> Five years should be great, some of the workers >> Well, as I said, I believe they're still using Oracle in certain workloads. Way, way, we digress. So AWS though, they take a different approach and I want to push on this a little bit with database. It's got more than a dozen, I think purpose-built databases. They take this kind of right tool for the right job approach was Oracle there converging all this function into a single database. SQL JSON graph databases, machine learning, blockchain. I'd love to talk about more about blockchain if we have time but seems to me that the right tool for the right job purpose-built, very granular down to the primitives and APIs. That seems to me to be a pretty viable approach versus kind of a Swiss Army approach. How do you compare the two? >> Yes, and it is to many initial programmers who are very interested for example, in graph databases or in time series databases. They are looking for a cheap database that will do the job for a particular project and that makes, for the program or for that individual piece of work is making a very sensible way of doing it and they pay for ads on it's clear cloud dynamics. The challenge as you have more and more data and as you're building up your data warehouse in your data lakes is that you do not want to have to move data from one place to another place. So for example, if you've got a Roller,, you have to move the database and it's a pretty complicated thing to do it, to move it to Redshift. It's a five or six steps to do that and each of those costs money and each of those take time. More importantly, they take time. The Oracle approach is a single database in terms of all the pieces that obviously you have multiple databases you have different OLTP databases and data warehouse databases but as a single architecture and a single design which means that all of the work in terms of moving stuff from one place to another place is within Oracle itself. It's Oracle that's doing that work for you and as you grow, that becomes very, very important. To me, very, very important, cost saving. The overhead of all those different ones and the databases themselves originate with all as open source and they've done very well with it and then there's a large revenue stream behind the, >> The AWS, you mean? >> Yes, the original database is in AWS and they've done a lot of work in terms of making it set with the panels, etc. But if a larger organization, especially very large ones and certainly if they want to combine, for example data warehouse with the OLTP and the inference which is in my opinion, a very good thing that they should be trying to do then that is incredibly difficult to do with AWS and in my opinion, AWS has to invest enormously in to make the whole ecosystem much better. >> Okay, so innovation required there maybe is part of the TAM expansion strategy but just to sort of digress for a second. So it seems like, and by the way, there are others that are doing, they're taking this converged approach. It seems like that is a trend. I mean, you certainly see it with single store. I mean, the name sort of implies that formerly MemSQL I think Monte Zweben of splice machine is probably headed in a similar direction, embedding AI in Microsoft's, kind of interesting. It seems like Microsoft is willing to build this abstraction layer that hides that complexity of the different tooling. AWS thus far has not taken that approach and then sort of looking at Snowflake, Snowflake's got a completely different, I think Snowflake's trying to do something completely different. I don't think they're necessarily trying to take Oracle head-on. I mean, they're certainly trying to just, I guess, let's talk about this. Snowflake simplified EDW, that's clear. Zero to snowflake in 90 minutes. It's got this data cloud vision. So you sign on to this Snowflake, speaking of layers they're abstracting the complexity of the underlying cloud. That's what the data cloud vision is all about. They, talk about this Global Mesh but they've not done a good job of explaining what the heck it is. We've been pushing them on that, but we got, >> Aspiration of moment >> Well, I guess, yeah, it seems that way. And so, but conceptually, it's I think very powerful but in reality, what snowflake is doing with data sharing, a lot of reading it's probably mostly read-only and I say, mostly read-only, oh, there you go. You'll get better but it's mostly read and so you're able to share the data, it's governed. I mean, it's exactly, quite genius how they've implemented this with its simplicity. It is a caching architecture. We've talked about that, we can geek out about that. There's good, there's bad, there's ugly but generally speaking, I guess my premise here I would love your thoughts. Is snowflakes trying to do something different? It's trying to be not just another data warehouse. It's not just trying to compete with data lakes. It's trying to create this data cloud to facilitate data sharing, put data in the hands of business owners in terms of a product build, data product builders. That's a different vision than anything I've seen thus far, your thoughts. >> I agree and even more going further, being a place where people can sell data. Put it up and make it available to whoever needs it and making it so simple that it can be shared across the country and across the world. I think it's a very powerful vision indeed. The challenge they have is that the pieces at the moment are very, very easy to use but the quality in terms of the, for example, joints, I mentioned, the joints were very powerful in Oracle. They don't try and do joints. They, they say >> They being Snowflake, snowflake. Yeah, they don't even write it. They would say use another Postgres >> Yeah. >> Database to do that. >> Yeah, so then they have a long way to go. >> Complex joints anyway, maybe simple joints, yeah. >> Complex joints, so they have a long way to go in terms of the functionality of their product and also in my opinion, they sure be going to have more types of databases inside it, including OLTP and they can do that. They have obviously got a great market gap and they can do that by acquisition as well as they can >> They've started. I think, I think they support JSON, right. >> Do they support JSON? And graph, I think there's a graph database that's either coming or it's there, I can't keep all that stuff in my head but there's no reason they can't go in that direction. I mean, in speaking to the founders in Snowflake they were like, look, we're kind of new. We would focus on simple. A lot of them came from Oracle so they know all database and they know how hard it is to do things like facilitate complex joints and do complex workload management and so they said, let's just simplify, we'll put it in the cloud and it will spin up a separate data warehouse. It's a virtual data warehouse every time you want one to. So that's how they handle those things. So different philosophy but again, coming back to some of the mission critical work and some of the larger Oracle customers, they said they have a thousand autonomous database customers. I think it was autonomous database, not ADW but anyway, a few stood out AON, lift, I think Deloitte stood out and as obviously, hundreds more. So we have people who misunderstand Oracle, I think. They got a big install base. They invest in R and D and they talk about lock-in sure but the CIO that I talked to and you talked to David, they're looking for business value. I would say that 75 to 80% of them will gravitate toward business value over the fear of lock-in and I think at the end of the day, they feel like, you know what? If our business is performing, it's a better business decision, it's a better business case. >> I fully agree, they've been very difficult to do business with in the past. Everybody's in dread of the >> The audit. >> The knock on the door from the auditor. >> Right. >> And that from a purchasing point of view has been really bad experience for many, many customers. The users of the database itself are very happy indeed. I mean, you talk to them and they understand why, what they're paying for. They understand the value and in terms of availability and all of the tools for complex multi-dimensional types of applications. It's pretty well, the only game in town. It's only DB2 and SQL that had any hope of doing >> Doing Microsoft, Microsoft SQL, right. >> Okay, SQL >> Which, okay, yeah, definitely competitive for sure. DB2, no IBM look, IBM lost its dominant position in database. They kind of seeded that. Oracle had to fight hard to win it. It wasn't obvious in the 80s who was going to be the database King and all had to fight. And to me, I always tell people the difference is that the chairman of Oracle is also the CTO. They spend money on R and D and they throw off a ton of cash. I want to say something about, >> I was just going to make one extra point. The simplicity and the capability of their cloud versions of all of this is incredibly good. They are better in terms of spending what you need or what you use much better than AWS, for example or anybody else. So they have really come full circle in terms of attractiveness in a cloud environment. >> You mean charging you for what you consume. Yeah, Mendelsohn talked about that. He made a big point about the granularity, you pay for only what you need. If you need 33 CPUs or the other databases you've got to shape, if you need 33, you've got to go to 64. I know that's true for everyone. I'm not sure if that's true too for snowflake. It may be, I got to dig into that a little bit, but maybe >> Yes, Snowflake has got a front end to hiding behind. >> Right, but I didn't want to push it that a little bit because I want to go look at their pricing strategies because I still think they make you buy, I may be wrong. I thought they make you still do a one-year or two-year or three-year term. I don't know if you can just turn it off at any time. They might allow, I should hold off. I'll do some more research on that but I wanted to make a point about the audits, you mentioned audits before. A big mistake that a lot of Oracle customers have made many times and we've written about this, negotiating with Oracle, you've got to bring your best and your brightest when you negotiate with Oracle. Some of the things that people didn't pay attention to and I think they've sort of caught onto this is that Oracle's SOW is adjudicate over the MSA, a lot of legal departments and procurement department. Oh, do we have an MSA? With all, Yes, you do, okay, great and because they think the MSA, they then can run. If they have an MSA, they can rubber stamp it but the SOW really dictateS and Oracle's gotcha there and they're really smart about that. So you got to bring your best and the brightest and you've got to really negotiate hard with Oracle, you get trouble. >> Sure. >> So it is what it is but coming back to Oracle, let's sort of wrap on this. Dominant position in mission critical, we saw that from the Gartner research, especially for operational, giant customer base, there's cloud-first notion, there's investing in R and D, open, we'll put a question Mark around that but hey, they're doing some cool stuff with Michael stuff. >> Ecosystem, I put that, ecosystem they're promoting their ecosystem. >> Yeah, and look, I mean, for a lot of their customers, we've talked to many, they say, look, there's actually, a tail at the tail way, this saves us money and we don't have to migrate. >> Yeah. So interesting, so I'll give you the last word. We started sort of focusing on the announcement. So what do you want to leave us with? >> My last word is that there are platforms with a certain key application or key parts of the infrastructure, which I think can differentiate themselves from the Azures or the AWS. and Oracle owns one of those, SAP might be another one but there are certain platforms which are big enough and important enough that they will, in my opinion will succeed in that cloud strategy for this. >> Great, David, thanks so much, appreciate your insights. >> Good to be here. Thank you for watching everybody, this is Dave Vellante for The Cube. We'll see you next time. (upbeat music)