>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's the Cube! Covering Oracle Modern Customer Experience 2017. Brought to you by Oracle. (light, upbeat music) >> Hey, welcome back everyone. We're here live in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay. This is the Cube. Silicon Angle's flagship program, where we go out to the events and extract the noise. I'm John Furrier with my co-host Peter Burris, Head of Research at Silicon Angle, Wikibon.com. And our next guest is Steve Krauss, Group Vice President of Product Management for Oracle Marketing Cloud. Great to see you again, welcome back to the cube. >> Thank you John. >> So a lot of great announcements today. I want to just jump into it. First of all, you've got a great job. You've got the product side. You've been busy this year, so congratulations. Some announcements I want to get your reaction to that we saw today. The Adaptive Intelligence, love that. I love how it speaks to the data in motion, real time needs of applications. >> Peter: 150 milliseconds >> 150 milliseconds boot shot. We got that on the queue, so it's on the record. It's going to be good, it's going to be good. And also the chat bot thing, which big fan of chat bots as an illustration of what's coming. Not so much as chat bots by themselves, but it does speak to the new user interactions, the new interfaces, new ways to notify and inform as part of that experience. This is some heavy tech, so I want, the first question is AI. Everyone seems to be washing thereselves. Oh, we've got A.I. >> Yeah, Yeah. >> Well that's just predictive analytics, that's been done before. >> Steve: M-Hmm. But Augmented Intelligence or Artificial Intelligence and Neural Networks have been around for a while. What are you guys doing specifically on the product side? Because this is super exciting announcements, to make Adaptive Intelligence work, what's the key tech? >> Steve: Yeah, Well there's a couple things. In fact, I think often when people talk about AI, they want to go immediately to the algorithms and think that somehow that is the only secret sauce. And the reality is, you know, like a lot of things in the world of computing, you put bad data into one of these things and you get bad results out. You put good data, you get good results. You put better data, that's when things start getting really interesting. And so one of the neat things about the marketing version of Adaptive Intelligence is called Adaptive Intelligence Offers, is that it has the ability to not just take the data that the marketer has, but it can reach into something called the Oracle Data Cloud and get additional data to drive better signal into the AI algorithms to make them run better. So we're bringing a data advantage to the table, and then probably as you've heard from the AI apps people, there's already a heritage at Oracle for building these real time decisioning systems. And so you've got these algorithms that are real time, that can adapt every click, update themselves, make the models go better. If you've tracked data mining for a long time, data mining contests, honestly the winner in second place is usually a very small margin. We think really that data piece is going to be the thing that's going to be the biggest differentiator. Because there's a lot of smart people with really great adaptive algorithms. So we're bringing both to the table. >> John: Okay, data or algorithms, there's always been the chicken in the egg syndrome. >> Yeah. >> Is it algorithms or the data, data or algorithms? A lot of people are voting in the crowd, that conversation we're involved in, data trumps algorithms. >> Steve: I would vote that way as well. I think there's far greater variance in what you can do with data if you collect it in a smart way. And in the case of Oracle, we've assembled this massive data cloud. It's not something someone else can casually do. The reality is with a lot of the algorithms, Google's open sourcing a lot of tents are slow, and so we'll see. I mean, it's not like we are chumps with the algorithms. We take that stuff very seriously, but the data itself just make everything more better. >> John: But the right tool for the right job is the same premise, you articulate for algorithms. Pick your tool, pick your algorithm, but if you don't have the data, you're SOL anyway. >> Peter: As you've mentioned John, the algorithms have been around a long time. What's new is that we now have so many more data sources, so we have data for the first time. >> John: And massive compute. >> And now we have massive compute that can be set up easily, so we actually do something with it. I want to point out, I want to test ya on this, we had Jack Berkowitz on honorly which is the source the 150 millisecond. Jack noted that Oracle aspires to be able to have the right answer anywhere in the world inside 150 milliseconds. Which is an amazing, amazing vision, and for most people who think of the cloud, they think of data flying all over the place. >> Steve: Yeah. For you guys, Jack said something very interesting, and I want to, as a proof point, Jack said, "Yeah but sometimes you don't have to move the data." >> Steve: Yes. >> And one of the advantages that you guys have, I think, which is what I want to test you on, is that by having a relatively complete, installed set of capabilities, you have that primary person data-first person data, and there is an advantage to not having to move it. Could you just articulate that a little bit? What does that... >> John: Is that true? >> First of all, is that true, and what kind of possibilities does that open up for Oracle and Oracle customers if it is true? >> Steve: Well yeah, I think you are onto something. Oracle obviously has the long heritage of having many enterprises and government's data in Oracle systems already in the first place. And those investments have been made. And so when you start talking about, "Let's add to that, let's add applications like Adaptive Intelligence offers." Well instead of saying we have to do these massive data transfers it may well be the case at this point that that data is resident an Oracle data center in the first place, and of course Oracle owns its own data centers. These are all world wide, so there's a bunch of advantages to the Oracle scale here. And one of them is that we don't have to move the mountain. Right? The mountain is already in the Oracle database, and we can go and put these services next to it that allow an ease of integration. And John, we were talking about this before we started here. It matters to make this stuff work fast when its a year long project to see if maybe its going to fly. That's no longer a reasonable thing, and so agility matters. Having the data where you already need it is great. >> John: Well and also the trend is system of record database and mountains of corpuses of stuff that you can tap into which you are pointing out, but also, I believe that the winner of all this will use a term that's used in the cloud industry: Standing Up Apps. >> Steve: Uh-huh. And I think that one of the things that's very clear to me if you look at the SAS marketplace where it's, and I think Mark Hurd said this, "There is no past, it's a SAS." So, in infrastructure, so and you kind of see in the separation, you have to have stuff done in weeks-apps. And I mean literally, not months, weeks. >> Steve: Yeah. >> And I would argue that minutes become it. So with that as a backdrop, how do you look at microservices? Because now, if look at, out of the move the data, so I might want to compose something and send it somewhere else, and move an app to the edge of the network or have a retail lab or do something in email. So now I can compose an app from data here and then move it so that brings up orchestration, microservices, and some of these cloud native concepts. How do you guys deal with that? >> Steve: Yeah, well let me give you the marketing part of this in terms of the Oracle Marketing Cloud. Because there are so many parts of Oracle, they have their own versions. For us, one of the big things we want is to have this concept called Orchestration that says if I'm a marketer, I should be able to reach my customer wherever he or she welcomes my messaging. These days, it no longer is just email. These are people who getting mobile messaging, they're potentially interacting with things like chat bots, it's become very fragmented. And so what Oracle wants to do is provide these Orchestration systems that allow apps plug in some that we build, but others that third parties build. So that as this complexity increases and there's more ways you can communicate, we can keep up with this in an agile way either ourselves or with others who do this really well. So that's one of the theories. >> John: It's the marketing cloud plus it's broader Oracle suite-cloud suite. >> Steve: Beautiful, yes. It's the Oracle Cloud suite which includes Oracle CX. It also includes something that we call the Oracle Marketing App Cloud, which is this third party ecosystem. Because we're Oracle, we have a lot of customers, we have hundreds of companies that say, "Yeah, I would love my stuff to get in the hands of Oracle's customer base." The way I'm going to do it is I'm going to make a turn key integration. So that when they buy it from me, they can just request turn it on for Oracle, and it will, again as you said, "Don't make it weeks, make it minutes." It's minutes when the integration is already done. >> So software business Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, still around one of the legends of the industry. Larry, if you're watching, you're still hanging around, taking names and kicking butt. Started off with shrink wrap software, then download on the internet, then you SAS, now you have SAS plus coming on. Which is smarter apps, smarter customer experience. So it begs the question on this next journey for customers, it's going to be really cloud all the way right. >> Steve: Yeah. >> So you're going to have to have this cloud component, you guys have a strategy there. Isn't Oracle moving away from, a smarter CX's data by the way, so Oracle's no longer a software company. You're a data company. >> Steve: M-hmm. >> Data is eating the world. Yeah no, software is eating the world, which Marc Andreessen wrote, now data is eating software. >> Steve: Uh-huh. How do you view that because some people say that software is never going to go away. But data is becoming much more of a front burner issue, vis-a-vis just like software was in software development. >> Steve: Sure, well I think some of this is just semantics as where software leave off and data begin. But a great example is the thing you talked about earlier, Adaptive Intelligence, where part of the power of this, what makes it different from what you can get elsewhere is that it comes with data included that is different data then is available from anyone else. And so, in fact, you know Oracle, when it made the big investment in the data cloud, people I think thought, "What are you doing, you just set up a vending machine for data? Is that what Oracle's going to be about?". And the answer there is no. I mean there is a good data business, but where it gets profound is when that strategic asset, all that data, all of the sudden enables new products like Adaptive Intelligence Offers to be fundamentally different than came before. >> John: It's an enabling technology. >> It can be absolutely, yes. >> John: Data is enabling. It brings to life apps and then offers new apps opportunities. That's what you said. >> Steve: Yes, and marking data very much is the fuel for the marketing engine. So you get richer fuel, you will get richer results. >> John: Alright, so we're getting down the weeds here, so bottom line, let's up level it up for the person that's watching and saying, "Hey, I got the message." >> Steve: Yeah. >> "Data is super important." >> Steve: Yeah. Bottom line, what is happening this week here in Modern CX that's important for the person that has to scratch their head, isn't inside the ropes in the industry? What's going off of their world? What should they be thinking about? How should they be planning their life moving forward in this new modern era of marketing? >> Steve: Yeah, so I think the big things announced this week definitely involves things like a new level of being able to do recommendations of offers and products using the Oracle Data Cloud. It involves conversational user interfaces such as the new chat bot's platform. And in the case of the marketing cloud, we've got a series of products that have come out that allow a greater degree of self service for both marketers as well as their stakeholders like sales people. So how does the sales person get the output of a marketing automation system? Sales people aren't necessarily known for assiduously going and looking for marketing assets. We've got some new things around, for example, content portals. We've got some new things around features that let people be more autonomous in getting their own work done rather than needing to go to some other system somewhere. >> John: Awesome. And the customer we had on this morning from Royal Philips, really was the head of CRM. So customer relationship management is not a new concept obviously, you guys have a big chunk of business there in the software side of it. But customer relationship management, that is marketing cloud now >> Steve: M-Hmm. >> and customer experiences. So you're starting to see that really go to the next level. What's the big take away for the person at home? Watching in their businesses as they go on their journeys. How should they be thinking about the customer relationship? >> Peter: Well, that's a big question. I think for a CRM oriented person who maybe started out in something like database marketing, where you had a list, and you somehow try to learn about people on the list, that world has gotten a lot bigger now. Where it used to be you learned about someone once they became your customer. These days, though various advertising technologies, you can learn about people you don't yet know, but you know of their existence. And you can start creating that relationship, hoping to draw them in maybe with ads to the point where they do self identify. So there's this whole front end to CRM that is showing up in ad tech with things like DMP's-Data Management Platforms, that solve the same problem, but do it in these whole other realms. >> John: And new channels. Adaptive Intelligence, I think, is an awesome position. Love that Adaptive Intelligence Apps, Apps being stood up on a platform. You guys have it. >> Steve: Yes. >> Where's the next level? Take us through, you run the product rode map. You know, share with the folks, what's on the road maps? What should they be expecting more from Oracle, where are you going to be doubling down, where's the work you filling the white spaces, and what should they expect of the next year? >> Steve: Sure. Well, at least in my key note this morning which again focused on marketing, we had four themes. One was intelligence, we already talked about that one quite a bit. Another is mobile, and that's not just mobile like chat bots, but it's actually mobilizing the experience of our customers' customers for the marketing. So example of this, we have a product called the Eloqua which lots of email can be sent. They have a new email designer that inherently builds responsively designed emails. So those are the ones you open up on your phone that look good, you open on the desktop they look good. That's how it all should work. Unfortunately, it's not for a lot of folks today. So just having that be part of the tooling, big deal. So that's the mobile part. We talked a bit about self service, that's theme number three. And the fourth theme is actually a bit of a sleeper, it's about taking another pass through some of the core technologies we already have that people use the most, and being able to find... >> John: Like what? >> Maximizer a test and targeting a personalization tool. Used by a lot of our customers, the fundamental thing you do inside maximizer is you live in a campaign designer. And it allows you to adjust various parts of a webpage for testing, targeting, and personalization. We've got an entirely new way to do that that's based on an analysis of what do people do when they use this and how can we shave off some number of clicks per session? How can we make it less error prone when people are deciding what to do? How can we make more performant? You talked about 150 milliseconds, how about if we just eliminate the save button altogether so that anything you do automatically saves in the background. You don't have to reload anything. That kind of stuff comes from watching people use the product and realizing, wow, they're in there all day long. If we can just make all of those things a little better, over a course of a year, that's huge. >> John: So basically, we're looking at the core jewels and the platform and making it simpler, reducing the steps to do things, just end up being more efficient in some of the proven tools. >> Steve: Exactly, and in the speech this morning, we said, "Hey look, we don't talk about this enough." >> John: That's not a sleeper that's good. >> The tendency is to come out here, and we all want to talk about everything that's new like AI and the people who are our actual customers. They're seeing pearls rain from the sky when all of the sudden something that took them 12 minutes to do at a time now takes eight, and they do that 2000 times a year. >> John: I always say it's a great business model by, you know, making things simpler, reducing the time to do things and steps >> Steve: Yeah >> and making things intuitive and easy to use. Which it sounds like you're doing, but now let's talk about the glamor side of it. Because I think AI and chat bots speaks to the future, what other glam do you see happening out there right now? Obviously, AI is hot right now. >> Steve: Yeah, I think the other glam at this point is a little more speculative at least as it applies to my area with marketing like Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and so on. There's also internet of things. Certainly that world is changing. There are more devices of various types that can talk to the network. We've got a customer, you may be familiar with it, a sleep number bed company, the ones that have the bed where you can pick your number. That's actually a connected device, and so there's some interesting things that can be done there with careful discretion about what data you're collecting. But when we started thinking about, incidentally, so many things that in the past used to be a inert objects are generating data. That can feed into various applications whether it's marketing or other areas. >> John: And more data's coming in, it's just not stopping. >> And it's great for Oracle because if Oracle is good at anything it's good at dealing with very large scale data. That's been the business for a long time, and the trend won't change. There will continue to be larger and larger scale data. >> Steve, final point, what's the theme of the show this year besides the messaging that you have? What do you seeing that's happening here that's evolving? What's the top story here? >> Steve: Well, you know we did a customer advisory board meeting here for the marketing cloud, and I think if I were going to ask the customers what their top story is, I think their top story is they themselves want to continue becoming more customer centric. Everybody talks about it. Well of course, we should be that way. But so many companies grew up doing things like focusing on the thing we're selling, they're being offer centric. And so organizationally changing, using the technologies like we have so they can create the kinds of experiences, we call them the connected customer experience that they themselves want to have. It's a bit challenge, and so their permissions are to say transform ourselves to be from the tech down to the organizational incentives, truly customer centric. >> John: Steve Krauss, Group Vice President of Product Management Oracle Marketing Cloud. Great to see you. Thanks for sharing the insight of the real road map and all the exciting stuff happening here and your clean up this morning, congratulations. I'm John Furrier and Peter Burris. More live coverage coming up here at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas with the Cube after this short break. (live upbeat music)