Executive VP & Principal Financial Officer, Oracle Corp
Oracle TV CloudWorld 2024: Doug Kehring on the Top Takeaways from CloudWorld 2024
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Doug Kehring, Oracle Executive Vice President and Head of Operations, joins Oracle TV to wrap up CloudWorld, sharing some of the biggest takeaways from announcements around multicloud, Oracle AI, fusion applications, database, and more.
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About Douglas Kehring
At Oracle CloudWorld 2024, Kehring highlighted the company's multicloud partnerships with AWS, Microsoft, and Google, stating that Oracle is "at the hub of everything that's going on" and that "from a multicloud perspective, no one else is doing what we're doing." He described Oracle's approach as bringing its hardware and capabilities to customers' existing cloud providers rather than forcing them to migrate. Kehring also discussed Oracle's strategy of embedding AI into its existing products, saying the "Oracle AI Advantage" is that customers do not need to buy new technology. He cited examples such as using natural language processing for financial planning and analysis and using automation to assist physicians by analyzing historical medical data. In a 2021 interview, Kehring discussed Oracle's corporate strategy, including the role of mergers and acquisitions and the acceleration of digital transformation during the pandemic. He said the pandemic created an opportunity for companies to revisit business processes and adopt innovative ways of working. Kehring described Oracle's position as the only cloud provider offering both applications and infrastructure, which he said enables integrated, autonomous solutions that help businesses automate and accelerate digital transformation. He stated that Oracle's goal is to align with customer success so that customers share positive experiences, helping the company reach "escape velocity" in business growth.
Transcript (75 segments)
K
Kendall Fisher0:10
and Head of Operations. Doug, it is so nice to have you back behind the desk with us.
D
Douglas Kehring0:15
I love to be a closer. It's always been what I've been good at.
F
Fritz Nelson0:18
We call it the frosting on the cake.
K
Kendall Fisher0:20
Exactly.
D
Douglas Kehring0:20
That's right.
K
Kendall Fisher0:21
The cherry on top, if you will.
D
Douglas Kehring0:23
For a great conference.
K
Kendall Fisher0:24
Yes, exactly. This has been an exceptional week so much has happened. But let's recap some of the biggest moments from CloudWorld 2024 so far. One of the biggest themes being multicloud in our partnership announcements. We just announced our partnership with AWS on Monday, and we had Microsoft here, we had Google here. So with these announcements and several of the new partnerships, what impact do you see this having on the Oracle community as a whole?
D
Douglas Kehring0:48
Well, I don't think anyone would have thought that Oracle could pull together the three largest other hyperscalers all in the same venue.
K
Kendall Fisher0:56
Right?
D
Douglas Kehring0:57
At all. But if I want to take those Oracle workloads and work with the cloud of my choice, I can do it. So I think that's really what's resonating with customers is this idea of flexibility and choice.
K
Kendall Fisher1:21
We had Bob Evans on who heads up Cloud Wars, and he was like that is like what I do. And now Larry is making it so there are no wars. All of you are getting along, he's like what am I going to do?
D
Douglas Kehring1:32
We call it the love fest.
K
Kendall Fisher1:34
There you go. There you go.
F
Fritz Nelson1:36
And you talk about some of the customer benefits, we heard State Street on stage with Larry, practically clapping in his seat. We had a few others here the same. How are customers already benefiting from these partnerships?
D
Douglas Kehring1:49
Well, again I think it's because a lot of customers are already in place with some of these other hyperscalers. So they in many instances, they've already made commitments. And the reality is the other vendors just don't understand how to run our workloads as well as we do. So we thought rather than forcing them to have to come off of what they're already using, why don't we bring what we have from a value perspective right to their back door. And bring our hardware, and bring our capabilities, and our support and now put it there. And work together with the other three vendors. And I think that's what's really driving the excitement with these customers for sure.
K
Kendall Fisher2:36
That's what we like to call our Oracle advantage. And speaking of our Oracle advantage, one of the other main themes here this week has been AI. What is the Oracle AI Advantage?
D
Douglas Kehring2:46
The Oracle AI Advantage is the fact that rather than forcing customers to have to go out and buy something new, we bring the AI into everything we already offer. We are embedding the AI capabilities into our existing applications and infrastructure.
K
Kendall Fisher3:11
Absolutely.
F
Fritz Nelson3:13
Well, there are some other Oracle advantages that we've heard this week here at CloudWorld. And like in Mike Sicilia's keynote about how the AI technology and all of our technology touches so many different industries, goes across industries. We've heard customers talk about how some of the things that we're doing is letting technology get out of their way, so that they can focus on the things they want to do on innovation. What about you, Kendall?
K
Kendall Fisher3:45
What about me?
F
Fritz Nelson3:46
I'm putting you on the spot.
K
Kendall Fisher3:48
What other things do we want to feed to Doug?
Security. Security was one of the top things that we talked about this week, right? Across the board in terms of how Oracle is providing top-notch security.
F
Fritz Nelson4:10
Now, to bring you back into it and others that we've missed out on?
D
Douglas Kehring4:14
Well, I think where we're really heading now as we've created these innovations is the realization that it's not about our customers buying single solutions, like buying just financials, or just HCM, or just the database. But what they're asking for is put yourselves in our shoes and start asking, how do I create more value for my company, and have it powered by the automation of Oracle? So we're flipping the script, if you will, rather than selling you the technology. We're starting with understanding your business needs and figuring out where do you want to go. How do you want to transform? And now let's take all these technologies, and put them together in unique and interesting ways, from the horizontal application, to the vertical applications, to all of the infrastructure, to the database, to the analytics et cetera. And we've been recognized as the fastest company from a closing and announcing financials as a public company. You don't do that by just putting in one application. You do that by looking across your entire portfolio of things you're doing.
F
Fritz Nelson5:22
Yeah, we just had DU on here out of the UAE, and they're putting all their workloads on Alloy, but they are also an ERP, HCM, supply chain customer. They talked about bringing that all together and for the reasons that you just stated. What about just coming back to AI? Do you have some favorite customer examples of how they're getting advantage out of the Oracle AI?
D
Douglas Kehring5:47
Yeah. Well, from an AI perspective, we're still early in the cycle if you will, from we're doing a lot of the training and inferencing on these tools. They have simple examples that everyone can relate to. For instance, we had a lot of conversations today with customers about that where they go. It's really expensive to help provide the reports my business units need. Why is that the case? Because every one of them wants a different report with a different output, and all of that today or historically has been extremely costly because all of it's labor based. They go in, they try to figure out what you want, they write their report, and then the next time you want it, you want it differently, you have to redo it. AI changes that dramatically because ultimately through natural language processing, you explain to the system what you're looking for. What information you want to see. It goes behind does all the compute, takes your corporate data, loads it up, and gives you the output you want without any human intervention. It's those are the type of examples that really are going to transform companies.
F
Fritz Nelson6:59
Yeah. And I think it's important to note that AI is not just about writing term papers or whatever else. What about in health for example?
D
Douglas Kehring7:14
Well, as we all know, health is of a great importance to Larry Ellison himself, and I've been a part of the conversations. And the way I try to break it down is the simple things. You go into the doctor's office and you have some symptoms. You're not sure what your problem is. And god forbid that the doctor that you met at medical school, got drunk the night before, and didn't show up for the class that talked about the exact symptoms you have.
K
Kendall Fisher7:43
Right, right.
D
Douglas Kehring7:44
Oh, boy.
K
Kendall Fisher7:45
Yeah.
D
Douglas Kehring7:45
You may not get the fix you need. The great thing about automation is it never stays out late, it never gets drunk, it never turns off, it's always there.
K
Kendall Fisher7:56
It's never hung over.
D
Douglas Kehring7:57
It's never... so the beauty is that we can have an AI system that has read every medical journal, knows every symptom and how to fix things. And then based upon listening in to the conversation with the physician and patient can then help the physician understand how to diagnose and potential treatment options. The physician still has to take the action. But all of a sudden you've changed the dynamics of how healthcare works, that's a good example in health of how we're revolutionizing patient care.
K
Kendall Fisher8:30
I think it's what Steve said, blurring the lines between human and technology, right?
D
Douglas Kehring8:35
That's right.
K
Kendall Fisher8:35
And we're making it work together so we're more productive and better overall.
F
Fritz Nelson8:40
Now, Mike talked up there about Industry Suites. Why is this so critical?
D
Douglas Kehring8:45
Well, Industry Suites are critical because I gave you the health example. But you can look across every industry that's out there. When we sit down with customers and they talk about what they're facing as an organization. They need to transform. And we think about what does that mean, whether that's construction and engineering. So you're thinking about what do I need to do in order to plan for a new building? How do I have to operate the new building? How do I have to pay my subcontractors? How do I get staffing for inside the building, for maintenance et cetera, so none of this stuff is in isolation. So what we're trying to do is when we think about Industry Suites, it's taken the power of everything Oracle has as an enterprise technology vendor. Bring it all together in new and unique ways that really no one else can provide, and then help partner with our customers to implement those solutions. So that they themselves can help revolutionize their own industries.
F
Fritz Nelson9:52
Yeah, and I think solutions is a good word, we keep hearing this come up because we often talk about technology, but it's about the delivery, right? And it changes the perspective when you come into the industries and health, it's the patient and construction, it's the project, right? And so get the technology...
D
Douglas Kehring10:23
I talk about it as experiences.
K
Kendall Fisher10:24
Yeah.
D
Douglas Kehring10:25
So what's the customer experience? What's the employee experience? What's the patient experience? What's the constituent experience? When you think about it that way, then all of a sudden these things fit together in new ways as opposed to as you said individual activities.
F
Fritz Nelson10:40
Right. So we also Mike also talked about industry playbooks. Can you talk about the importance or the value that we as Oracle can bring with a playbook for these industries?
D
Douglas Kehring10:54
Well, of course it started with the Oracle Playbook. You have all of these things going on. I want to know how to do it like you do it. And how do I report my financials faster? How do I create a customer obsession organization things like that, and so what we've done is tried to bring it together. So we bring together the business processes that came around it. We bring the culture change that comes with different things that you're trying to attack, and then the automation that has to go with it. We marry that all together and we explain it from a practitioner standpoint. So we don't just bring our IT folks, but we bring our line of business folks that have actually put this together and implemented. And we go sit down with customers and explain, this is how we did it, this is our best practices, these are our lessons learned. And the light bulbs turn on in the customer. And then we add to that the idea is now we can help them implement and accelerate their activities.
F
Fritz Nelson12:12
Right.
K
Kendall Fisher12:12
So I'm so glad that you hit on customer success services. We had Gary Miller and Damien Carey come behind the desk with us, I guess yesterday was it. And they talked about the Cloud Success Navigator which is helping our customers achieve their goals. Again, putting the customers at the heart of everything we do. Can you define Oracle's total customer commitment? That's a big part of this and why we're doing the cloud success navigator, how would you define our total customer?
D
Douglas Kehring12:38
Yeah, so the way I would describe a customer success service is around the idea that traditionally we've had a great job selling you the best technology in the world, right?
K
Kendall Fisher12:49
Right.
D
Douglas Kehring12:49
And we've had the best engineers to develop those technologies. But we haven't always been there to make sure that customers get value from the technologies in all situations. So what we're doing now is we're creating a service that helps customers get the most out of their investment. And it's obviously good for customers to have that, but it's also good for us because we want them to be happy customers. We want them to tell everybody, all their friends about it, and that creates more business for us, so it all works in tandem together.
K
Kendall Fisher13:24
And we're taking this commitment beyond just what we're seeing here at CloudWorld Vegas. We're taking it on the road this year, right? Can you tell us a little bit about CloudWorld Tours and what's new this year?
D
Douglas Kehring13:35
Well, I think the reality is that not everyone can be at CloudWorld in Las Vegas for lots of different reasons. So what we wanted to do was say let's bring what we have to your local country or your local area. And obviously last year we had a bunch of local CloudWorlds and now we'll have even more this year. And there are some of the best attended items of those CloudWorld Tours.
K
Kendall Fisher14:12
We've added some new cities. Are you looking forward to any favorites in particular?
D
Douglas Kehring14:17
Well, there's a lot of new cities. I like all the Europe ones that we're expanding into across Germany, continental Europe, I mean there's a bunch of new areas there. We've added Australia into the mix which is always good to get down under. So the reality is we continue to find success from bringing it at a local level. We'll just keep expanding to more cities that are interested.
K
Kendall Fisher14:41
Really looking forward to it.
F
Fritz Nelson14:43
Yeah and some in America too.
D
Douglas Kehring14:45
And South America obviously, across the world obviously.
F
Fritz Nelson14:48
Yes.
K
Kendall Fisher14:48
Exactly.
F
Fritz Nelson14:49
So what are you, just to wrap it up, what are you most excited about over the next 6 to 12 months?
D
Douglas Kehring14:55
It really is that Oracle is now the worst kept secret in the cloud, and they're all getting it. They see the unique value that we're bringing. We're now starting to really get the recognition that comes with that. And it's opening doors but not from a standpoint of geez I'm forced to use Oracle. But the reality is they're seeing how they can expand with Oracle in ways that complement what they're already doing in their environment, so I think there's only great things to go from here.
F
Fritz Nelson15:38
Yeah, we heard it here all day.
K
Kendall Fisher15:40
Exactly.
D
Douglas Kehring15:41
I'm sure yeah.
K
Kendall Fisher15:42
Meeting our customers needs, giving them more choices, and it's all very exciting everybody is very, very happy here at CloudWorld.
D
Douglas Kehring15:49
I think it's all around a big change in culture, the customer obsession that now invades everything we do, where whether you're an engineer, you're thinking about the customer.
F
Fritz Nelson16:10
For sure.
K
Kendall Fisher16:10
Well, I can't wait to keep doing that, at all the events to come following CloudWorld Las Vegas. And Doug, we so appreciate you joining us here today, to put a big red bow on top, a big Oracle red bow on top of CloudWorld 2024. Thank you.
D
Douglas Kehring16:22
I should have worn your jacket, what it really looked like.
F
Fritz Nelson16:23
I know.
K
Kendall Fisher16:24
Do you want a trade?
D
Douglas Kehring16:25
Exactly.
K
Kendall Fisher16:27
Thank you so much, Doug.