>>Yeah, yeah, yeah! >>Everybody, welcome back to the special digital presentation where we are tracking the transformation of Oracle consulting. And really, it's rebirth. Aaron Millstone is back. He's the senior vice president of consulting, joined by Jeff Davis. Who's ah, principal at Deloitte. He's the chief commercial officer for Oracle at Deloitte. Gentlemen, good to see you. Welcome. >>Thank you very much. >>Thanks for having me back. >>You're welcome, guys. Jeff, let me start with you. I've got the obvious question is why would Deloitte World Class? Yes, I well known why you partnering with Oracle Consultant? >>We're really It was a perfect match. The fact that we were looking to grow our oracle practice and really new and innovative ways around Oracle's cloud technology. Uh, in discussions with the oil, coal and specifically with Aaron Millstone, we discovered that we really had complementary capabilities and very little overlapping capabilities. So it was natural for us to find a way to work together. And specifically we found that there were strategic assets we had and there were tactical assets that Oracle had the mixture of two made a really unique and compelling value proposition for the customer base >>and Aaron. I mean, we've talked about the shift from from staff augmentation to much more strategic partnering with your customers. But you're not trying to compete with the big size of there's, there's it sounds like there's not a lot of overlap there. Where do you pick up and leave off for Deloitte? You describe that? >>Sure. I mean, we're You're right, right? We're not. We're not ever going to try to compete with the Deloitte. It's not our that's not in our DNA. It's not our intention. We exist to drive Oracle's to drive success for our customers on Oracle's cloud. That's that's our mantra. That's what we focus in on. So for us, right, we're deep technologists. We're We understand our cloud. We understand how cloud works within our various product suites that we migrate to the cloud. We understand how to manage it. We understand how to build paths extensions to it, but we don't have big program management. We don't understand non oracle components that well, you know, we've got some expertise here and there. But if we need to expand, you know, on Oracle solution to coexist with a Microsoft azure solution, we can't do that without going to a partner and as we bigger and the transformation that they're gonna have to change management and big, big transformation journey capabilities. Like again, That's not That's not expertise. >>Yeah, so Jeff will come back to you. So we see a lot of these deals. Sometimes we call them Barney deals. I love you. You love me. There's a press release, and that's it. But so one of the things we look for okay is their teeth behind this. You guys have come out with what you call elevate. What is elevate? How did it get started? And I have some follow up questions. >>Yeah, well, elevate really got started when Aaron and I started to look at the assets that each of the firms possessed on the Deloitte side, as Aaron suggested, We have deep capabilities and a broad range of technologies, some of them competing technologies with Oracle at the same time. Uh, we didn't have a great deal of depth in Oracle's technical products, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Oracle Autonomous. Our bench was not as big as Aaron's, and Aaron also had access to your local development at a level that we didn't have access to. So we really found ourselves in a situation where we could put those two capabilities together and we could offer something to our clients and a broad range of customers. Oracle customers in the field. They had access to all of the Lloyds capabilities, which includes great project management, great change management, real skill around the strategic aspects of cloud migration. And Aaron had tools on had resource is trained and developed around the late historical technology. They'd always be a step ahead of any s I So together we felt this was really a differentiation for marketplace, right, Erin? >>Yeah, absolutely right. And if I don't think I would add to it is that if you if you look at Deloitte approaches client conversation from, ah, business value perspective, you know, the work consulting teams tends to focus conversation. It tends to approach conversations with a focus on How do you want to do the technology? Um, both are helpful. But, you know, quite frankly, as we get into the bigger information in place, we need to lead with the Lloyd model of how do we How do we drive your business value and then begin from a technologist perspective, that's when we show up. So it really has been a very logical, very complimentary match. >>So you and I have talked about, you know, data centers and building data centers and investing. It's not just it's just not a good use of capital today. There's so many other things that organizations can do. You guys have identified data center. Consolidation is, is I'll call it Ah, you know, an initiative that you're seeing customers. I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit. Is that kind of a starting point for conversations? >>Yeah, well, it's definitely starting point, right? So we call it a referred to his infrastructure led transformation, Um, and appetite. The appetite for that is certainly high. We were seeing an increased focus on um, you know what customers need to do to take not just a workload here and there. But how do they get out of the data center business full? So it's a foregone conclusion, right? Like you just said, it's not. It's not really a question of should we invest in another data center? Where should we invest in up to in their data centers? The question has changed to Let's move the cloud. How do we get there and let's move in a big way? And that's why we're seeing that dialogue across all of our customers. And we find even for Oracle, it's been a learning for us, right? We started with on Oracle workload conversation, which is, Do you want to move this work? Work loads of oracle? But you want to move that Oracle workload works. And really, what we're finding is it's a wholesale transformation of everything in the data center, too. One or more clouds, right again, often often it's a multi cloud strategy, and that's okay. And we, you know, we were having more bigger conversations. The thing that has been really interesting is these conversations have evolved, and especially as we work with our partners at Deloitte, has been that, you know, we think that the combination of our our cloud technology, the consulting services that Oracle Consulting and Deloitte can bring to bear and then Oracle's ability to finance the whole deal makes the very compelling conversations for customers because you can walk in to a CEO to a CFO and say, Look on day one, you can actually have a lower spend that what you have today in your data center and get a cop transformation underway at the same time. >>So I want to come back to that business case and member Jeff, before we do, I want to ask you. So we heard Erin, you know, talking about the catalyst. You know, that sort of infrastructure transformation. But you're in the outcomes business, right in both. The bush has been deployed especially so So what is that North Star that you're seeing with customers? You know, it's not about the tech. They're not starting there. Um, that will often tell you that's kind of the easy part. But then we see tech coming and going, and it's the It's the business process. That's the people issues lining everybody. So what are you seeing is so the outcomes. What's that conversation like with your customers? >>Yeah, well, really, this conversation starts with business leadership. Um, if you think about it, there's a strong value proposition in infrastructure renewal. It's not at the top of mind, but once you start to understand the value that's created, it does raise two ah, high priority. Now, our experiences that virtually every board is looking for the C suite toe have a cloud strategy of some kind. People recognize the value of cloud in, uh in many of our clients and many of Oracle's customers, so the boards are pressing the C suite for a cloud strategy. Among those things are the value that cloud brings, including virtually unlimited scalability. Is is being tested real time now with a lot of current events. So when you see the scalability when you know you need a cloud strategy of some kind, your business advisors impressing you, the value proposition starts well, how do we get there? And what does it take to be successful? Our perspective is that it's it's fair to believe that the cloud will reduce infrastructure. Spend significantly. It's a great opportunity for consolidation. It also adds a layer of security, resiliency and scalability that you simply couldn't do on your own. So it addresses a lot of business needs Aziz well as a number of technical needs that need to be addressed. >>So let's talk a little bit more about that business cases that generally what you're seeing, where it starts is let's take some costs right out, and then Aaron, you and I talked about maybe investing that in the future of it. But is that really the starting point for the vast majority of customers? Let's let's let's cut some costs right away and get a payback immediately. >>So I'd like to share our perspective, which is, you know, nobody spends money for the sake of spending money on technology. It's got to have meaningful business value. So the conversation starts with really renewal and a path to the cloud. But there's a natural opportunity for savings in consolidation that we take advantage. We're not simply shifting from your hardware to the cloud we're actually modernizing, which will result in significant savings. But it also gives the business something that they don't have today at a level of security and scalability and ability to run a modern technology much faster, much better. Ah, and much more scalable. >>So a lot of people might again I go back to these deals. I think of this as a sales play. One of the things we look for is there. Is there any other integration? Are you doing co engineering in this case, maybe not, co engineering But are there tools that you're developing that you're taking to market, that you're actually leveraging? Eric, can you talk about that a little bit? Convinces. That's not just the sales play. >>Yeah, sure. And Jeff alluded to some of this earlier, too, right? So we definitely each had our respective tool. Angry Deloitte's investments in tools, what was built out of data that we have seen used quite a few times now we've been investing in something we call the Oracle soar. You know, our tools are, as you'd imagine, heavily Oracle focus. It's about moving Oracle technology to Oracle Cloud out of data and some of the tools that Deloitte's invested in our focus more comprehensively on holistically, looking at everything in a data center and everything that's across data centers and start to develop a set of facts around this stuff. But in both cases, we actually looked at these things and we said, You know what? If you combine these together, we get a very comprehensive view of what exactly it is, but we're looking at with a customer so we can tell everything from the types of traffic we see in the network to the specific versions of stuff you start to identify whether there's risk associated with having things, not aster on a supporter and get a very conference of you that's based on facts. And so, you know, we took those tools. We combined them together so that we can go into a customer and give a complete end and view from both on Oracle and Delight Perspective. And quite frankly, it doesn't matter whether the Lloyd leads or whether Oracle leads. We've developed these tools together. We're going to market together. And we've even got you know, the templates you'd expect consultancies tohave, right? So when you look at business cases, we've got joint business case templates that we've created together and that we're using actively with customers and therefore then we're refining them, improving them each time we do it. But, you know, we're at a point now where our tools are combined, templates are combined, and we even at this, you know, we're even Jeff in our poll earlier yesterday actually even got a joint Ah, war room that's constantly engaging with different account teams and making sure that we structurally approach things in a consistent way so that we're driving business value and using the tools appropriately. >>You know, I think, um, migration risk is probably one of the most significant factors in a business case. I mean, many don't understand it, but those in I t. And certainly hopefully in the executive office do you understand it? It sounds like that's a part of your tooling, anyway is designed to mitigate that's significant migration risk. When you talk about that a little bit, >>yeah, so we, you know, we approach migration from, you know, we start with the conversation. I'm almost always some type of log of what? The list of applications, what versions of things running they've been maintained by some might department somewhere, right? Or the collective? It's in varying degrees of accuracy is what we find. We don't rely on that. We go in and our our tools, our combined tooling across oracle, Deloitte interrogate the systems. We come back with actual information from the actual systems themselves. And then we started the plan. And so the funny thing is, with the migration, you know, probably 80% of the effort. 90% of the effort is in the planning stages and making sure that we understand exactly what we're moving exactly. When again, we're not. We're not dealing with the edge applications. Typically, we're dealing with the mission critical applications that are supporting the heart of a supply chain or a finance operation. And you can't. You just can't afford the down time that maybe you could afford on something that might be a consumer facing or a little less mission. Critical. So, yeah, we start finding very early and interrogate aggressively with actual data. >>Jeff, can you give us a sense as to how far you're into this elevate journey? May be thinking about a couple of customers either specifically or generically gonna where you're at with them. How far along? Maybe even some examples that you feel are representative. >>Sure. Um, you know, the the relationship has been probably about six Ah, close to seven months of maturity. In that time, we've had an opportunity to work on several key clients at scale. Uh, we've worked together in collaboration with one of the nation's largest retailers in the grocery business. We've worked collaboratively in aerospace and defense and also in the hospitality industry. In these cases, what we're finding and one is each one is in the various stage of maturity. One is done, one is in midstream on one is at the early stages and current economic conditions or driving a huge pipeline. Right now, I think our challenge right now is making sure that we identify those clients that can best take a value, take advantage of our services and our joint offering to deal with that pipeline. Right now, what we're finding is that the savings are at least as we projected. In some cases, we're finding even more. What people say they have and what people say they do isn't necessarily what you find when you get in there. But almost every case we're finding that there's unused equipment, unused capacity that they currently have redundancy, low utilization of their current assets. We can go a long way and streamlining that. Plus, I can't emphasize enough that ah, these days security is a major concern and we're adding a layer of security that they could never achieve themselves with soft. >>How do you guys on how the customers wanna approach the transaction? Is it a Bixby is a T and M. Is it a situation where you participate in some of the some of the savings of the game. How does the pricing work? >>So we have Go >>ahead. Um, I'll start off by saying each deal is really custom built around what a customer really needs, what they're trying to get out of it right now. As an example, Op X is very important. So we're engineering deals in a way that helps customers deal with their financial challenges, especially around op Ex. There are other structures that we can put in place. We have the backing of Oracle Finance, so we can be very innovative on deals they could be. When value was attained. They could be milestone based. There's just, uh, I think, a wide variety I don't want to say unlimited, but a wide variety of different options that we can offer our clients in order to be able to deal with whatever financial challenge or opportunity that may be looking at >>perfect, perfect. And you want >>to add to that >>and everything looking at other than you know, the there are. There are always things that are discovered during a personal project, and so, you know, we we also we do factor and things that allow some flexibility. Right? So even if we have a fixed price deal will include a bucket of ours to deal with, you know, unanticipated changes or even innovation. It doesn't have to be, You know, contingency could be Hey, we want to go out and spend and invest some money on artificial intelligence machine learning analytics over in this space since we've already moved these applications. All right, so we're approaching it again from a very flexible standpoint, and we're just point right. We can we can custom craft. Ah, deal to match what? The clients. Best business outcome. Okay. >>Yeah, that makes sense. That client might see some adjacent opportunity that they want to pursue, and they want that to be covered in the agreement I'm gonna end. Um, if you start with you, Aaron and then Jeff go to you. How? What do you guys see? A success? What does success look like? You know, when you were, you know, just less than a year in when you're 234 let's say five years and you look back, What does success look like? >>So, to me, successful success is gonna look like we've gotten a number of these big transformation deals in play. It's in motion, naturally between our organizations, not necessarily driven entirely by Jeff and I going out and driving the organization behave the right way. It's more in our DNA. But more importantly, I think we've gone into We've gone beyond the conversation of Let's Move workloads. We've gone into conversations off. Let's really talk about how to reimagine your business on top of Oracle's cloud and have an ongoing dialogue that looks at that transformation. Once we hit that 0.345 years from now, right, that will be a wild success, Jeff. >>But really, it's been around for 135 years. This is our birthday, uh, this year and in that time, what we've learned is there's no substitute for impact and value added to our clients. In our perspective, what this would success looks like his client success find success means improved scalability of their operations, uh, securing their technology and their data at a substantially lower cost, so that they can focus on what their core businesses and focus less on technology. That success to deploy >>right guys, thanks so much. Great session We're not only witnessing the rebirth of Oracle Consulting, but there's clearly a transformation going on. And it's cultural. Gentlemen, congratulations on your partnership. And thanks so much for coming on the Cube. >>Thank you so much >>for having us. >>You're welcome. Alright, Keep right there, everybody. We're back with our next guest covering Oracle Consulting North America. This is Dave Vellante with the Cube. Thanks for watching. >>Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, >>yeah.