CloudWorld 2023: Partners Big Part of Oracle's Vision to Transform Industries
Oracle is focused on delivering technologies with and through partners.
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Channel Futures: Is there an overall message or theme for partners here at CloudWorld?
Doug Smith: We are open and we are partnering with everybody because we’re so customer-focused. A good example is some of the partnerships that we’ve done, including our expansion of our relationship with Microsoft last week. It really shows how customer-focused we are and how we’re leveraging partnerships to go do that. And then we’ve had so much engagement with partners this week and it’s really around how together we can do more solution innovation. So we’re creating more valuable solutions for customers.
Customers want solutions. They don’t want products in most cases. And our partners play a really important role in delivering solutions, which customers can then turn into great outcomes. To do that, we work very closely with partners on driving what we call business impact through collaborative go-to-market. So how do we make sure that from our lead-generation activities when it comes to marketing, all the way through the sales cycle, that we’re working hand in hand with our partners to make sure our customers have an amazing buying experience?
An ideal state, I would say, is when our customers have a hard time deciphering where our partner starts and ends, and where Oracle starts and ends, because our collaboration with the partner is done in such a way that the customer says, “I don’t know if it’s Oracle; I don’t know if it’s another partner or the partner who’s actually doing the work, but I’m just happy because they’re solving my needs, enabling me to solve problems, to take advantage of business opportunities and to deliver the outcomes that we’re seeking.”
So solution innovation, business impact or collaborative go-to-market, and the third one is around customer success. And we’ve been focused as a company on customer success for a long time. But this year we took some real, meaningful actions to create a customer success organization, and my organization from a partnerships perspective does a tremendous amount of work with that organization, with our partners to help enable and equip them to deliver more customer success. Because after all, the vast majority of the implementations that our customers do are using our partner ecosystem.
CF: A lot of new offerings and capabilities have been announced here, in particular new AI and generative AI capabilities. What are some examples of new opportunities these will create for partners?
DS: It really runs across at every level of our technology stack. For example, if you look at our Fusion SaaS applications, we’ve been working with AI for decades and I think generative AI has helped change the conversation in the last year. We’ve announced with our human capital management system how we’re taking generative AI and creating real value for customers and how they generate job descriptions, for example, for postings and go through that. So we’re implementing it throughout our application layers. We’ve had, for example, an autonomous database which leverages AI to go manage the database layer. We’ve got a wide variety of generative AI partners who are selecting Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) because it’s the right compute platform for them, the right cloud platform for them, and they’re doing tremendous work. As we shared this week, we’re going to have a a generative AI service out shortly that’s powered by Cohere and OCI. So when customers want that AI service, and they want especially the value proposition that Oracle and Cohere are together offering around specifically for enterprises and being able to make sure they have that control and the security around their data, we’re delivering on that. So we’re delivering across AI broadly and specifically with AI in every different way that a customer could want to engage with it.
CF: Last week, Oracle and Microsoft announced Oracle Database@Azure. Is this going to benefit Oracle’s various partner types, like cloud services partners, cloud resellers, ISVs, etc.?
DS: Absolutely. And so many conversations I’ve had with partners this week have been around their level of excitement around what that enables them to do. It’s really a lot of our partners. Let me start with multicloud. It’s what customers want. Customers are asking for this. They don’t want to take a single bet on one cloud. They want to be able to leverage the best capabilities of each cloud that meets their needs.
Customers are excited about how they can now do this in a very seamless way with us doing Oracle Database@Azure. And if you think about ISV partners who look at this and they say, “Great, I can take advantage of that, too.: Your professional services partners, the SIs, they love it because they see exactly the same need. They’re working with their clients across multiple clouds and now we’re equipping those SI partners to more seamlessly deliver their professional services and their managed services across clouds. So it’s been incredibly well received by our partners.
CF: What sort of growth has Oracle experienced in the past year and what role do partners play in that growth?
DS: The growth across all of our technologies have been dramatic. And the partner role, the vast majority of Oracle implementations, irrespective of the business that we’re in, are with and through partners. And they and customers run in heterogeneous environments. They are picking best-of-breed technologies that they want to work with, whatever works well for them. And so whether it’s an ISV partner or a services SI partner, they are instrumental to making sure that customers are successful with Oracle. The growth and the strength, the impact that our partner ecosystem is having in Oracle’s growth rates is meaningful, and this is a lot of volume here. I’m here to help build and grow, and strengthen that partner ecosystem. So it continues to lead in supporting the high growth rates that Oracle is experiencing.
CF: What sort of feedback are you receiving here? What are partners’ latest needs, concerns?
DS: The feedback has been fantastic. We had our Oracle Partner Success Summit on Monday and we had over capacity in terms of the level of partners, tremendous growth. They want to be here. We’ve got fantastic presence of customer executives here, which is very attractive for Oracle and our partners to engage with the right people around what are the most challenging problems or most interesting opportunities that as customers, they’re working to solve, and how Oracle, with our partners, can help them do that. If you talk to partners across our base this week, they’re going to tell you that they ’re having great engagement with customers and great engagement with Oracle. This is meaningful to helping them advance their mission.
CF: Many organizations are dealing with tight budgets. How is Oracle helping partners meet their needs?
DS: By focusing on the customer needs. The customers are continuing to transform, and in an environment like we’re in today, customers need to transform even more than they ever have before. So what’s beautiful about this is that we’re focused on delivering technologies with and through our partners that enable customers to do that. So I feel like we’re in a sweet spot in terms of what Oracle’s mission is, what our partners are going after together to help customers. And when we are very focused on meeting customer needs, then we’re helping to lead our customers through this period, and help them grow and achieve their potential. So I feel like Oracle, together with our partners because we’re jointly so focused on the customer, we’re very well-aligned with what those customers need and deliver against it.
CF: What do you hope partners can take back home from CloudWorld and make use of in their businesses?
DS: Oracle has had a lot of announcements this week. There are a lot of things that not only we are doing from a product and service perspective that create opportunities for partners, there are pieces that we’re delivering in terms of customer success … where we’re putting new tools, putting our methodologies, making those available actively for partners so that they can use it to help leverage and grow the success of their business. So we’re really focused on equipping and enabling the partners to be more successful, be aligned with us in our strategy and being customer focused so that we deliver on it.
Vincent Trass, managing director of Profource, said all of the information shared about AI and generative AI gave him some new insights about what it could mean for his company and its customers.
“So it’s a call to action for all of us to do more and go faster,” he said. “I like that. I think customers will start asking about AI and generative AI, so we have to stay ahead of the game, and this conference has really given me insights. My questions were mostly what can it do for us in real life instead of the funny, cool things you can see on the internet and ChatGPT, and so forth. What can it do in real life for our ERP and HEM customers, because we work with Oracle SaaS products. So that really helped. I need to work with my teams to inspire them as well, to give them an idea of what is actually being done now with AI within all of the Oracle products. And I think Oracle is much further than most people realize, especially our customers, but also my teams.”
Andreas Tvranger, global sales and alliance manager at Crayon, said all the talk about AI and generative AI is “really exciting and all of our customers are screaming for that.”
“So we are here sucking up all the information we can have of how Oracle is teaming up with Microsoft and their solutions … we think [Database@Azure] is a great announcement and can bring a lot of value for our customers, but also for us as a partner because it means new engagements, new projects, and the way we can help guide and support our customers for future success,” he said.
Shankar Jagannathan, Commvault‘s head of global operations, said his company is also exploring AI solutions and “it’s not just about the AI of the past because AI has been around for a decade.”
“It’s about generative AI and how you use that,” he said. “And like everyone else, we have a lot of data sets, too, so we’re trying to see how to unlock what the backup data sets can give you. And it’s fascinating, the discussions we had even with the product engineering team here, so we’re trying to see the possibilities around future data lakes and things like that, and how generative AI and generative GPT can unlock some of those insights versus the painful ways of looking into the data sets themselves. That’s a future direction for us and that’s not immediately on our path of what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to stay focused on solutions we bring to market right away, but that’s absolutely the possibility as we expand our footprint in OCI.”
Vincent Trass, managing director of Profource, said all of the information shared about AI and generative AI gave him some new insights about what it could mean for his company and its customers.
“So it’s a call to action for all of us to do more and go faster,” he said. “I like that. I think customers will start asking about AI and generative AI, so we have to stay ahead of the game, and this conference has really given me insights. My questions were mostly what can it do for us in real life instead of the funny, cool things you can see on the internet and ChatGPT, and so forth. What can it do in real life for our ERP and HEM customers, because we work with Oracle SaaS products. So that really helped. I need to work with my teams to inspire them as well, to give them an idea of what is actually being done now with AI within all of the Oracle products. And I think Oracle is much further than most people realize, especially our customers, but also my teams.”
Andreas Tvranger, global sales and alliance manager at Crayon, said all the talk about AI and generative AI is “really exciting and all of our customers are screaming for that.”
“So we are here sucking up all the information we can have of how Oracle is teaming up with Microsoft and their solutions … we think [Database@Azure] is a great announcement and can bring a lot of value for our customers, but also for us as a partner because it means new engagements, new projects, and the way we can help guide and support our customers for future success,” he said.
Shankar Jagannathan, Commvault‘s head of global operations, said his company is also exploring AI solutions and “it’s not just about the AI of the past because AI has been around for a decade.”
“It’s about generative AI and how you use that,” he said. “And like everyone else, we have a lot of data sets, too, so we’re trying to see how to unlock what the backup data sets can give you. And it’s fascinating, the discussions we had even with the product engineering team here, so we’re trying to see the possibilities around future data lakes and things like that, and how generative AI and generative GPT can unlock some of those insights versus the painful ways of looking into the data sets themselves. That’s a future direction for us and that’s not immediately on our path of what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to stay focused on solutions we bring to market right away, but that’s absolutely the possibility as we expand our footprint in OCI.”
ORACLE CLOUDWORLD 2023 — At CloudWorld 2023, Oracle chairman and CTO Larry Ellison said several industries can transform using 21st century technologies.
Doug Smith, Oracle’s senior vice president of strategic partnerships and global partner ecosystem, said partners have a big role in that vision. At Oracle CloudWorld 2023, Oracle announced numerous new offerings and capabilities — in particular, several new capabilities incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI.
In health care, Ellison laid out a vision for how Oracle can have a meaningful impact on improving care and reducing costs, among other things.
Oracle’s Doug Smith
“There are technology answers to that, and there are pieces … that go beyond the technology, too,” Smith noted. “And even among the technology, we don’t have all the technology to go do that ourselves. So we need technology partners to help complement what we’re doing to go deliver the technology pieces. And then we need that services partner ecosystem that can go bleed into these other areas to make sure that technology is really relevant and impactful, and in delivering the outcomes.”
Oracle CloudWorld 2023: Partner Ecosystem Necessary to Execute Mission
Oracle has been very clear to tackle this vision and its mission for what it can change in health care, and there has to be a “partner ecosystem with and around Oracle to go do it,” Smith said.
“And so we’re very committed to taking the ecosystem with us,” he said. “We have been continuing to help those partners engage with us in new ways and to attract new partners into the ecosystem. I use health care as an example, but it’s the same for the retail industry — the manufacturing industry, financial services, hospitality and the list goes on. In every single one of those areas, we need a very rich and deep ecosystem, and it doesn’t have to be around having thousands or hundreds of thousands of partners. It has to be around having the right partners, having the right, meaningful, deep relationship with Oracle to deliver on customer needs.”
See our slideshow above for more from Smith at Oracle CloudWorld 2023.
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