How Oracle transforms its operation into a cloud business - Gerald Venzl from Oracle
Cloud CommuteMay 17, 2024
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How Oracle transforms its operation into a cloud business - Gerald Venzl from Oracle

Gerald Venzl, lead product manager for Oracle databases, talks about the shift of focus away from on-premise databases towards the cloud. It's a big change for a company like Oracle, but a necessary one. Learn more about the challenges and why Oracle believes multi-cloud is the future.

If you have questions to Gerald, you can reach him here:

You can find the Oracle Database team at:

Additional show notes:

The Cloud Commute Podcast is presented by simplyblock (https://www.simplyblock.io)


01:00:00
Believe it or not, database development,

01:00:02
it feels a lot like a startup.

01:00:03
There's no fixed hierarchies as

01:00:05
such. You can only do this. You

01:00:08
must only do this or anything like

01:00:09
that. You can very openly approach

01:00:11
the development leads,

01:00:12
so even up to the SVP levels. And

01:00:15
actually, just as we started now,

01:00:17
one of those guys was like,

01:00:18
"Hey, let's talk while I'm driving

01:00:19
into work." "Sorry, I'm busy right now."

01:00:28
You're listening to simplyblock's Cloud Commute Podcast,

01:00:30
your weekly 20 minute

01:00:31
podcast about cloud technologies,

01:00:33
Kubernetes, security,

01:00:34
sustainability, and more.

01:00:36
Welcome back to the next episode

01:00:38
of simpleblock's

01:00:38
Cloud Commute podcast.

01:00:40
Today I have a very special guest,

01:00:41
like always. I mean, I never have

01:00:43
non-special guests.

01:00:45
But today he's very special

01:00:47
because he's from a

01:00:48
very different background.

01:00:50
Gerald, welcome. And maybe you

01:00:53
can introduce yourself. Who are

01:00:55
you? And how did you happen

01:00:58
to be here?

01:00:59
Yeah, thank you very

01:01:00
much, Chris. Well, how I really

01:01:01
don't know, but I'm Gerald.

01:01:03
I'm a database product manager for

01:01:05
Oracle Database, working for

01:01:06
Oracle a bit over 12 years now in

01:01:09
California, originally from

01:01:11
Austria. And yeah, kind of had an

01:01:15
interesting path that set me into

01:01:17
database product management.

01:01:18
Essentially, I was a developer who

01:01:20
developed a lot

01:01:21
of PL SQL alongside

01:01:22
other programming languages,

01:01:23
building ERP systems with

01:01:25
databases in the background,

01:01:26
the Oracle database. And

01:01:27
eventually that's how I ended up

01:01:29
in product management for Oracle.

01:01:32
The how I'm here, I think you

01:01:33
found me. We have a fun

01:01:35
conversation about five

01:01:37
years ago, as we know,

01:01:38
when we met first at a conference,

01:01:41
as it so often happens. And yeah,

01:01:44
you kind of reached out and

01:01:46
think today is all about talking a

01:01:48
bit about Cloud Native, database

01:01:50
and everything else we can come

01:01:52
up with.

01:01:53
Exactly. Is it

01:01:55
five years ago that we've seen

01:01:58
last time or that we've seen at all?

01:01:59
No, that we've met five years ago.

01:02:03
Seriously?

01:02:03
Yeah.

01:02:04
Are you sure it

01:02:05
wasn't JavaOne somewhere

01:02:07
way before that? Well, we probably

01:02:08
crossed paths, right? But I think

01:02:10
it was the conference there

01:02:11
where we both had the speaker

01:02:13
dinner and got to exchange some, I

01:02:16
mean, more than just like,

01:02:17
"Hello, I'm so-and-so."

01:02:20
All right, that's fair. Well, you said you're

01:02:24
working for Oracle. I think

01:02:25
Oracle doesn't really need any

01:02:27
introduction. Probably everyone

01:02:29
listening in knows what Oracle

01:02:31
is. But maybe you said you're a

01:02:35
product manager from the database

01:02:36
department. So what is that

01:02:38
like? I mean, it's special or it's

01:02:41
different from the typical

01:02:42
audience or from the typical

01:02:44
guest that I have. So how is the

01:02:47
life of a product manager?

01:02:50
Yeah, I think so what I

01:02:52
particularly like about Oracle

01:02:55
product

01:02:56
management, or especially in

01:02:57
database, obviously different

01:02:58
lines of business and then inside

01:03:00
Oracle may operate differently.

01:03:02
It's a job with a lot of facets.

01:03:06
So the typical kind of product

01:03:07
management job, the way how it

01:03:09
was described to me was, well, you

01:03:12
gather customer requirements, you

01:03:14
bring it back to development,

01:03:17
then it gets implemented, and then

01:03:18
you kind of do go-to-market

01:03:19
campaigns. So basically, you're

01:03:21
responsible for the collateral,

01:03:23
what's the message to advocate

01:03:24
these new features to customers,

01:03:26
to the world, and then that's not

01:03:29
so true for Oracle. I think one of

01:03:32
the things that really

01:03:33
excites me in database world, it's

01:03:35
like this goes back to the late

01:03:36
70s. I mean, other than Larry,

01:03:39
not that many people are around

01:03:40
from the era anymore. But Oracle

01:03:42
back then did a lot of things

01:03:44
that were either before its time

01:03:47
or when there simply was no other

01:03:49
choice or way of doing it,

01:03:51
commensural wisdom, I would say.

01:03:53
So one of the nice things in

01:03:54
Oracle is that

01:03:55
actually the coming up

01:03:56
with new features is really a nice

01:03:58
collaboration between development

01:04:00
and product management.

01:04:01
So development just as much as

01:04:03
their own ideas of what we need to

01:04:05
do or should be doing,

01:04:06
like the PMs, and we really get

01:04:08
together and discuss it out. And

01:04:10
of course, sometimes,

01:04:11
there's features that you may or

01:04:13
may not agree with personally or

01:04:15
don't see the need for. And often,

01:04:17
actually, and much more so, you

01:04:19
get quite amazed by what we've

01:04:21
come up with. And we have a lot of

01:04:23
really smart people in the work.

01:04:26
And one thing that, yeah, not to

01:04:29
go too much into a rabbit hole,

01:04:31
but a couple of things that I

01:04:32
really like. It's like, A, believe

01:04:33
it or not, database development,

01:04:35
it feels a lot like a startup.

01:04:37
There's no fixed hierarchies as

01:04:38
such. You can only do this. You

01:04:41
must only do this or anything like

01:04:43
that. You can very openly approach

01:04:45
the development leads,

01:04:46
so even up to the SVP levels. And

01:04:48
actually, just as we started now,

01:04:51
one of those guys was like,

01:04:52
"Hey, let's talk while I'm driving

01:04:53
into work." Sorry, I'm busy right

01:04:56
now. So you have that going.

01:05:00
And then also, there's a lot of

01:05:01
the product management work is

01:05:03
very, there are a lot of

01:05:06
facets to it. So it's not just

01:05:08
define the product or anything

01:05:12
like that. That is

01:05:13
obviously part of

01:05:13
it, but also it's evangelizing as

01:05:15
I'm doing right now. I speak to

01:05:17
people on a thought leadership

01:05:20
front for data management, if you

01:05:22
like, or how to

01:05:23
organize data and so forth.

01:05:26
And as I said before, one other

01:05:28
thing that I really enjoy working

01:05:30
in a team is there's a couple of,

01:05:31
so there's actually quite a lot of

01:05:32
really smart people in the org

01:05:34
that go back to the 90s and some

01:05:36
of them even to the 80s. So I got

01:05:38
one guy who can explain exactly

01:05:40
how you would lay out some bytes

01:05:42
on disk for fastest read, etc.

01:05:44
Then this is stuff that I never

01:05:45
really touched anymore in school.

01:05:48
We were already too abstract. It's

01:05:50
like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.

01:05:51
There's some disk and it stores

01:05:52
some stuff." But you get still

01:05:55
these low level guys and some of

01:05:56
them, one of them is like, "Yeah,

01:05:59
helped on the C compiler back then

01:06:01
with Kernighan." It's like there

01:06:02
was one of the

01:06:03
guys but was involved

01:06:04
in it. And so anyway, as you know

01:06:07
in the industry, people go around

01:06:08
quite a bit. And so that has a lot

01:06:11
going there. But yeah.

01:06:15
So from the other perspective, I

01:06:17
mean, Oracle is known for big

01:06:20
database servers. I think everyone

01:06:21
remembers the database clusters.

01:06:24
These days, it's mostly like

01:06:27
SUN Sparc, I guess. But there's

01:06:30
also the Oracle Cloud and the

01:06:32
database in the cloud. So how does

01:06:37
that play into each other?

01:06:39
Oh, yeah. Now things have changed

01:06:42
drastically. I mean, traditionally

01:06:43
starting a database software in

01:06:47
the good old 80s where you didn't

01:06:50
even have terminal server or

01:06:51
whatever, a client server. So the

01:06:53
first version is apparently a

01:06:55
terminal based or

01:06:56
something like that.

01:06:56
It's like, again, I never saw

01:06:58
this. You're like, "Yeah, that was

01:06:59
a big client server push." And

01:07:01
obviously now there's a big push

01:07:03
into what's cloud and a lot of

01:07:04
cloud is means really distributed

01:07:06
systems. And so how does it play

01:07:11
into each other? So all the

01:07:12
database cloud

01:07:13
services in Oracle Cloud,

01:07:15
all the Oracle database cloud

01:07:16
services are owned by us in

01:07:18
development as well.

01:07:19
So we have gone into

01:07:20
this mode of building cloud

01:07:22
services for Oracle database. And

01:07:26
of course, that's

01:07:26
really nice because

01:07:27
that gives us this kind of

01:07:30
visibility to the requirements of

01:07:32
distributed storage or distributed

01:07:33
workloads and that in turn feeds

01:07:37
back into the product. So for

01:07:38
example, we are still one of the

01:07:41
very few relational databases that

01:07:43
offers you sharding on a

01:07:45
relational model,

01:07:46
which is, of course,

01:07:47
I mean, to me, of course, much

01:07:48
harder than a self-contained

01:07:51
hierarchical model such as JSON,

01:07:52
which you can shard way nicer. But

01:07:55
once you actually split up your

01:07:56
data across a bunch of

01:07:57
different tables and have

01:07:58
relations between those, sharding

01:08:00
becomes quite more complicated.

01:08:02
And then of course, it's like we

01:08:04
have a lot of database know-how,

01:08:07
but that's not to neglect it.

01:08:08
We also got MySQL, they do also

01:08:10
their thing with good

01:08:11
collaboration going on with them.

01:08:12
So we have sort of quite a good, I

01:08:16
want to say, brain power,

01:08:18
intellectual power in the company

01:08:20
when it comes to accessing data

01:08:23
and to writing data. You mentioned

01:08:25
Sparc there before. There's,

01:08:26
of course, a lot of that going on.

01:08:29
And quite frankly, I will say even

01:08:31
way before cloud,

01:08:33
the fact of accessing data that

01:08:35
doesn't necessarily sit in a

01:08:37
database but analyze

01:08:38
it or query it with

01:08:39
SQL. It's like you literally go

01:08:42
back like 10, 12 years ago and

01:08:45
everybody said Hadoop will kill

01:08:46
every database and big data is the

01:08:48
way forward. And I'm sure there

01:08:49
was the same thing going on

01:08:50
in the mid 2000s. I was not in the

01:08:52
industry yet. So like, yeah, this

01:08:54
notion of that you have data

01:08:55
sitting somewhere else and you

01:08:56
just want to analyze it has been

01:09:00
around for a long, long time,

01:09:01
actually much longer than people

01:09:03
see now with objects store buckets

01:09:05
and data lakes and all

01:09:06
the good stuff. So yeah.

01:09:10
So how does that look like for customers?

01:09:14
I mean, I can see that smaller

01:09:17
customers won't have an issue with

01:09:19
the cloud, but I could imagine

01:09:20
that banks or insurances or stuff

01:09:22
like that may actually have that.

01:09:26
What does the typical cloud

01:09:27
customer for Oracle look like? I

01:09:29
think it may be very different

01:09:30
from a lot of other people using

01:09:32
Postgres or something.

01:09:34
Yeah. I mean, you kind of

01:09:36
mentioned it before. I think there

01:09:38
is, are you small

01:09:39
or are you large?

01:09:40
Right. And the SMB, small, medium

01:09:43
business customers, the smaller

01:09:44
ones, obviously,

01:09:46
they're very much attracted by

01:09:48
cloud, the fact that they don't

01:09:49
have to stand up servers and the

01:09:51
data centers themselves to just

01:09:52
get their product or their

01:09:54
services to their

01:09:55
customers. Big guys

01:09:57
are much more like consolidation

01:09:58
and the biggest customers we work

01:10:01
with, it's really kind of like

01:10:03
their data center costs are

01:10:05
massive because they are massive

01:10:06
data centers. So

01:10:07
they are looking at

01:10:08
a more of a cost saving exercise.

01:10:10
Okay. If we can lift and shift

01:10:11
this all to cloud, not only can I

01:10:13
close down my data centers or

01:10:14
large portion to it, but of course

01:10:16
also most of them actually

01:10:18
re-leveraging their workforce. So

01:10:20
people, especially the ops guys

01:10:21
are always very scared of cloud or

01:10:23
often very scared of cloud that

01:10:24
will take their job away. But

01:10:26
actually most customers are just

01:10:27
thinking like, "Rather than

01:10:29
looking after the servers running

01:10:30
at this good stuff, maybe in

01:10:33
2024, we can leverage your time

01:10:35
for something that's more

01:10:37
important to the business, so more

01:10:38
tangible to the business." So

01:10:41
they're not necessarily looking so

01:10:42
much to just get

01:10:43
rid of that workforce,

01:10:44
but transforming it to take care

01:10:48
of other tasks. A couple of years

01:10:49
ago when we did a big push to

01:10:53
cloud for Oracle Database and our

01:10:55
premier database, Cloud Service

01:10:57
Autonomous Database came out,

01:11:00
there was quite a big push for the

01:11:01
DBAs to transform into something

01:11:03
more like a data governance

01:11:05
person. So like all the data

01:11:06
privacy laws have crept in quite

01:11:11
heavily in the last five to 10

01:11:13
years. I mean, they were always

01:11:14
there, but with GDPR and all these

01:11:16
sorts of laws, they are quite

01:11:18
different in what they are asking

01:11:21
from data privacy laws before. And

01:11:24
this is getting more

01:11:25
and more and more complex, quite

01:11:27
frankly. So there was obviously a

01:11:29
lot of aspects of, "Hey,

01:11:30
you are the guys who look after

01:11:32
these databases storing these

01:11:34
terabytes and terabytes of data."

01:11:36
It's like, "Now we have these

01:11:37
regulatory requirements, where

01:11:39
this needs to be stored,

01:11:40
how this needs to be accessed, et

01:11:41
cetera." And I might try to have

01:11:43
you figure that out and

01:11:44
figure out whether the backup was

01:11:46
successfully taken or something

01:11:48
like that. So you're looking

01:11:49
at that angle. But yeah, so the

01:11:52
big guys, then they, I think to

01:11:54
some extent also very quickly

01:11:57
get very concerned of whether data

01:11:58
is stored public cloud or not.

01:12:01
Oracle was actually,

01:12:04
I want to say we were either the

01:12:05
first or definitely a forerunner

01:12:07
of what we called

01:12:08
cloud customer. So basically you

01:12:12
can have an Oracle cloud at your

01:12:14
site. So you reinstall Oracle

01:12:16
cloud in your data center. So for

01:12:18
those customers who say, "This

01:12:21
data is really, really precious."

01:12:22
You always have a spectrum. It's

01:12:25
like there's a lot of data you

01:12:26
don't care, a lot of public data

01:12:27
that you may or may not store,

01:12:28
reference data and so forth, that

01:12:32
you have to have

01:12:32
for your operations.

01:12:33
And then there's actually the

01:12:34
really sensitive data, your

01:12:35
customer confidential information

01:12:37
and so forth. And so there's

01:12:38
always a spectrum of stuff that I

01:12:41
don't care can move quicker to

01:12:43
cloud or whatever. And then of

01:12:45
course, the highly confidential

01:12:47
data or competitive

01:12:48
confidential data.

01:12:49
I really don't want anybody else

01:12:51
to get a hold of this or it's not

01:12:53
allowed or regulatory.

01:12:55
Those systems then they look into

01:12:56
a similar model where they say,

01:12:58
"Well, we like this sort of

01:12:59
subscription-based model where we

01:13:02
just pay a monthly or yearly fee per

01:13:04
use and still all the

01:13:06
automation is there." It's like we

01:13:07
still don't have to have people

01:13:09
looking whether the backup

01:13:10
is successful or something. But we

01:13:12
want it in our data center. We

01:13:14
want to be full control. We want

01:13:15
to be able to basically kind of

01:13:17
pull out the cable if we have to

01:13:19
and the data resides in our data

01:13:20
center and you guys can no longer

01:13:21
access it. Sort of that sense. I

01:13:24
mean, that is

01:13:24
obviously very extreme.

01:13:26
And so this is what we call cloud

01:13:27
customers. You can have an Oracle

01:13:28
cloud environment installed

01:13:30
in your data center. Our guys will

01:13:33
go in there and set everything up

01:13:34
like it is in public cloud.

01:13:38
That is interesting. I didn't know

01:13:41
that thing existed.

01:13:42
Yeah, it's actually gotten much

01:13:44
bigger now. So just to finish up

01:13:46
on that, it's like, so now we

01:13:48
have these, I mean, even

01:13:50
governments is this next level,

01:13:51
right? So governments come back,

01:13:55
right? And they go like, "Well, we

01:13:56
are pick any country's government.

01:13:59
We're not going to store

01:14:00
our data in another country's data

01:14:02
center." So this kind of like

01:14:04
exploded into like even what

01:14:05
we call government regions. So,

01:14:07
and there's some public references

01:14:08
out there where some governments

01:14:09
actually have a government region

01:14:11
of Oracle cloud in their country.

01:14:13
But yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to.

01:14:15
No, no, no, it's all right. It's

01:14:17
all right. It's

01:14:18
about you, not about me.

01:14:21
So it's interesting. I didn't know

01:14:24
that that Oracle or Oracle Cloud at

01:14:26
customer existed.

01:14:27
Is that probably how AWS handled

01:14:30
all the like AWS or what is it

01:14:36
called Oracle at AWS or something?

01:14:39
No, so no, no, no. So AWS is

01:14:41
different. So AWS came out with

01:14:44
outposts, but that

01:14:45
was actually years

01:14:45
later when you do your research,

01:14:47
you see that Oracle had this way

01:14:48
longer. But now I think every

01:14:50
provider has some sort of like

01:14:51
cloud at customer derivative. But

01:14:55
now what, so AWS is Oracle

01:14:57
databases and what they call RDS,

01:15:00
the relational database services.

01:15:02
But I think what you're thinking

01:15:03
of is the Microsoft Azure

01:15:05
partnership that we did. So

01:15:08
there's an Oracle database at

01:15:10
Microsoft Azure.

01:15:13
And even that has a precursor to

01:15:14
it. So a couple of years ago,

01:15:16
basically Microsoft and Oracle

01:15:17
partnered up and put a fast

01:15:19
interconnect between the two

01:15:20
clouds so that you

01:15:22
kind of don't go out

01:15:23
of public net, etc. But you could

01:15:25
interconnect them from cloud data

01:15:26
center to cloud data center,

01:15:27
they were essentially co-located

01:15:29
in the same kind of data center

01:15:31
buildings. I mean,

01:15:34
factories really what they look

01:15:35
like these days. So and that's how

01:15:37
you got this fast interconnect,

01:15:39
or kind of like buildings next to

01:15:40
each other. And that was the

01:15:44
beginning of the

01:15:44
partnership. And yeah,

01:15:45
by now you actually, it was big

01:15:47
announcement that sort of

01:15:48
actually, you

01:15:49
know, Satya Nadella and

01:15:50
Larry Ellison were up in Redmond

01:15:53
at Microsoft, I want to say was

01:15:55
last fall, kind of September

01:15:57
timeframe, something like that,

01:15:59
maybe a little bit off there, but

01:16:00
around the time,

01:16:01
where they had this joint

01:16:02
announcement that yeah, you can

01:16:04
have now Oracle database in Azure.

01:16:07
But you know, the Oracle database

01:16:08
happens to still run on Oracle

01:16:10
cloud infrastructure.

01:16:11
And why this fast connect is

01:16:13
exposed to Azure. Now the

01:16:14
important thing is like,

01:16:16
the whole all the billing, all the

01:16:18
provisioning, all the

01:16:19
connectivity,

01:16:19
everything you do is going

01:16:20
through Azure. So you actually

01:16:22
don't have to know Oracle cloud,

01:16:24
what effect that runs in Oracle

01:16:26
cloud that is all taken care of.

01:16:28
And that caters to the customers,

01:16:30
we have, you know,

01:16:31
lots and lots and lots of

01:16:32
customers who have applications

01:16:33
that run on a Microsoft stack,

01:16:35
rather than pick any Windows based

01:16:37
application that are in Azure,

01:16:39
it's a natural fit, what happens

01:16:41
to have an Oracle database back

01:16:42
end. And I think that in general

01:16:44
is something that we see in the

01:16:46
industry right now that, you know,

01:16:48
these clouds in the beginning kind

01:16:52
of like became this,

01:16:53
this massive monolithic islands

01:16:55
where you can go into the cloud

01:16:57
and they provide you all these

01:16:58
services, but it was very hard to

01:16:59
actually talk to different

01:17:01
services between clouds. And our

01:17:03
founder and CTO Larry Allison

01:17:05
thinks very highly of what he calls

01:17:07
multi cloud or what we call multi

01:17:09
cloud, you know, it's like you

01:17:10
should not have to kind of put all

01:17:12
your eggs in a basket. It's

01:17:13
literally a kind of the good old

01:17:15
story of vendor lock-in again, just

01:17:17
in cloud world. So yeah, you

01:17:20
should not have to, you know, have

01:17:22
to have one cloud provider and

01:17:24
that's only it. And even there,

01:17:26
we have already seen government

01:17:28
regulations that actually say,

01:17:29
yeah, you know,

01:17:30
you have to be able

01:17:31
to run at least two clouds or

01:17:32
whatever, right? So if one cloud

01:17:34
provider goes out

01:17:34
of business or down

01:17:35
or whatever, you know, you cannot

01:17:37
completely go out of business

01:17:39
either. I mean, it's unlikely,

01:17:40
but you know how the government

01:17:42
regulations happen, right?

01:17:45
Right. So two very

01:17:47
important questions. First, super,

01:17:50
super important. How do I get an

01:17:51
interconnect to Azure data

01:17:54
centers to my home.

01:17:57
Oh, to your home. Yeah. That I don't

01:17:59
know. They are really expensive.

01:18:01
There's some big pipes.

01:18:05
But that is the important question. The

01:18:06
other one, I mean, sure, that's a

01:18:09
partnership between, you said

01:18:10
Microsoft and Oracle, so maybe I

01:18:11
was, maybe I was off, but are

01:18:13
other cloud providers on the

01:18:15
roadmap are there talks. If you, if

01:18:17
you can talk about

01:18:18
that, I know it's probably...

01:18:19
Yeah. I mean, I'm too

01:18:21
far away to know what exactly is

01:18:23
happening. I do know for a fact

01:18:25
that, I mean, we get the question

01:18:27
from customers as well all the

01:18:28
time. And, you

01:18:30
know, against common

01:18:33
belief, I want to say, it's not so

01:18:35
much us that isn't willing to play

01:18:37
ball. It's more than the

01:18:38
other cloud vendors. So, we are

01:18:41
definitely interested into

01:18:42
exposing our services, especially

01:18:44
Oracle database services on other

01:18:48
clouds and we actively pursuing

01:18:49
that. But yeah, it's like,

01:18:52
you know, it's basically needs a

01:18:54
big corporate partnership. So I

01:18:56
don't, there's many, many people

01:18:58
that look at that and want to have

01:18:59
a say in that. But I hope that in

01:19:01
a, some time we reach a point

01:19:05
where, where all of these clouds

01:19:07
perhaps become interconnected, or

01:19:10
at least it's easier, you know,

01:19:11
to exchange information. I mean,

01:19:13
even like this ingress/egress

01:19:14
thing is already

01:19:15
ridiculous, I find,

01:19:17
right? So this was another thing

01:19:18
that Oracle did from the very

01:19:19
early days. It's like we didn't

01:19:20
charge for egress, right? It's

01:19:22
like if data goes out of your

01:19:23
cloud, well, we

01:19:24
don't charge you for it.

01:19:26
And now you see other cloud

01:19:27
vendors dropping their egress

01:19:28
prices, either

01:19:29
constantly going lower and

01:19:30
lower and lower or dropping them

01:19:32
all together. But you know,

01:19:34
customer demand will push it

01:19:35
eventually, right? Right. I think

01:19:37
I think that is true. I mean, for

01:19:40
a lot of bigger companies,

01:19:41
it becomes very important to not

01:19:43
be just on a single cloud

01:19:45
provider, but to be just like

01:19:48
failure safe, fault tolerant,

01:19:50
whatever you want to call it. And

01:19:51
that means sometimes you actually

01:19:53
have to go to separate clouds, but

01:19:55
keeping state or synchronizing

01:19:57
state between those clouds is

01:19:59
yeah, as you said, it's very, very

01:20:01
expensive, or it gets very

01:20:02
expensive, very

01:20:03
fast. Let's say that

01:20:04
way. So because we're pretty

01:20:09
much running out of time already,

01:20:12
is there any secret on the

01:20:14
roadmap you really want to share?

01:20:17
Regarding cloud in general, I

01:20:20
mean, I want to,

01:20:21
you know, one thing

01:20:22
that I should, usually I will kind

01:20:24
of want to say, you know, it's

01:20:24
like, okay, Oracle database, you

01:20:26
know, a lot of people may go, you

01:20:28
know, it's like, this is old, this

01:20:30
is legacy, what can I do with it,

01:20:32
etc. So that's all not true,

01:20:34
right? We just kind of announced

01:20:35
our vector

01:20:36
support, kind of got quite

01:20:38
heavily involved with that lately.

01:20:40
So that's kind of new and

01:20:42
exciting. And you will see,

01:20:44
you'll soon see a new version of

01:20:46
Oracle database, we announced this

01:20:48
already a Cloud World, that has

01:20:49
this vector support in it. So

01:20:52
we're definitely top notch there.

01:20:55
And yeah, the, you

01:20:57
know, how do I get

01:20:58
started with Oracle database, this

01:20:59
is also something that often

01:21:00
people haven't looked for

01:21:02
a long time anymore. So these

01:21:04
days, you can get an Oracle

01:21:05
database via Docker

01:21:06
image, or you have

01:21:07
also this new database variation

01:21:10
called Oracle Database Free. So

01:21:12
you can literally just google

01:21:14
Oracle Database Free, it's kind of

01:21:15
like a successor of the good old

01:21:18
Express edition for those people

01:21:19
who happen to have heard of that,

01:21:21
but too many people didn't know

01:21:23
that Oracle Database, there

01:21:24
was a free variant of that. And so

01:21:26
that's why we literally put it in

01:21:27
a name Oracle Database Free.

01:21:29
So that's your self contained free

01:21:31
to use Oracle Database, you know,

01:21:34
it's like, has certain

01:21:35
storage restrictions, basically,

01:21:38
and then you kind of go to too big

01:21:40
as a database. And but the big

01:21:42
item is more like, it doesn't come

01:21:45
with commercial support. So you

01:21:46
can think a little bit of like in

01:21:47
the open source world of Community

01:21:49
Edition at Enterprise Edition. So

01:21:51
you know, it's like, Oracle

01:21:52
Database Free is the free thing

01:21:54
that doesn't come with support,

01:21:55
it's essentially restricts itself

01:21:57
to a certain size. And it's really

01:21:59
meant for you to tinker around,

01:22:01
develop, run small apps on,

01:22:03
etc. But yeah, just google that or

01:22:06
go to oracle.com/database/free.

01:22:09
You will find it there. And yeah,

01:22:12
just give Oracle Database a go. I

01:22:15
think you will find that we have

01:22:16
kept up with with the time. As

01:22:19
mentioned before, you know, one of

01:22:21
the very few relational databases

01:22:22
that can shard on a relational

01:22:24
model, not only on JSON or

01:22:26
whatever. So

01:22:27
certainly a lot of good

01:22:28
things in there.

01:22:30
Right. So, last question, what do you think it's like

01:22:33
the next big thing or the next

01:22:35
cool thing, or even maybe it's

01:22:37
already here.

01:22:39
I mean, I'm looking at the whole AI thing

01:22:41
that's obviously pushing heavily.

01:22:44
And I'm sort of like, I'm kind of

01:22:48
like old enough to have seen

01:22:49
some hype cycles, you know, kind

01:22:51
of completely facepalm. And I'm

01:22:54
still young enough to be very

01:22:55
excited. So somewhere on the fence

01:22:56
there to be like, yeah, so AI

01:22:58
could be the next big thing,

01:22:59
or it could just, you know, kind

01:23:02
of once everybody realizes...

01:23:03
The next not-big-thing.

01:23:06
Exactly. I think right now there's

01:23:09
nothing else on the horizon. I

01:23:10
mean, maybe there's always the

01:23:11
always something

01:23:12
coming. But I think

01:23:13
everybody's so laser focused on AI

01:23:16
right now that we probably don't

01:23:17
even care to look anywhere else.

01:23:20
So we'll see how that goes. But

01:23:23
yeah, I think, you know, there's

01:23:26
something to it. We shall see.

01:23:31
That's fair. I think that

01:23:33
is probably true as

01:23:35
well. I mean, I asked

01:23:37
a question everyone, and I always

01:23:39
would have a hard time answering

01:23:40
by myself. So I'm asking all

01:23:42
the people to get some good answer

01:23:44
if somebody asks me that someday.

01:23:45
Yes. Smart, actually.

01:23:50
I know, I know. That's what I

01:23:51
that's what I tried to be. I

01:23:53
wanted to say what I

01:23:54
am, but I'm not sure

01:23:55
I'm actually smart. All right.

01:24:00
That was a pleasure. It was it

01:24:03
was nice. Thank you very much

01:24:04
for being here. I hope to see you

01:24:08
somewhere at a conference soon again.

01:24:10
Yeah, thanks for having me.

01:24:11
It was really fun.

01:24:12
Oh no, my pleasure. And for the

01:24:15
audience, hear you

01:24:17
next week or you hear me

01:24:18
next week. Next episode, next

01:24:21
week. See you. Thanks.

01:24:24
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