>> Thinking back over the past 15 years
of the modern cloud computing era
we were first told that cloud was only for startups.
It was for experiments, entire kickers.
No IT executive would ever move production workloads
or strategic data into the cloud.
No financial services firm is another example
would ever move anything into the cloud.
Multi-cloud then emerged as a symptom
of multi-vendor or of mergers and acquisitions or both.
Fast forward now to 2022 and
customers clearly want to take advantage
of the best services that each cloud offers.
For example, Azure for Microsoft apps,
Amazon for IS, Google cloud for AI,
Oracle for database, et cetera.
However, this approach requires expertise
in each cloud's primitives, tools and APIs
and it puts the burden on customers to integrate apps
and workloads across clouds, which increases cost,
it exposes security risks
and it creates time to market friction.
The future of cloud is no longer just on-prem to cloud
or so-called hybrid, but cloud to cloud.
What many call multi-cloud and at the cube,
we like to think beyond
the conventional view of multi-cloud,
and it's why we use the term super cloud
as a metaphor for cross cloud services that are
purpose built to solve a specific problem.
While at the same time leveraging the best
that various cloud providers have to offer.
Karan Batta is the vice president
of product management at OCI for Oracle
and Kris Rice is the vice president
of software development at Oracle database,
and both are joining me in this cube conversation
to discuss how Oracle and Microsoft
are helping customers address
cross cloud integration issues,
making it possible for customers to use
popular Azure based tools and Oracle databases
and what the firm's claim is a simplified, secure
and more facile experience, effectively making two clouds
appear as one to developers and, and users.
Gentlemen, welcome.
Thanks for coming on the cube.
>> Thanks for having me, Dave
>> Karan, let's start with the news.
What are you announcing?
Why is it important to each company
and what does it mean for your customers?
>> Yeah, absolutely.
Thanks for having me, Dave.
I think, you know, what, what I can tell you
is Microsoft and Oracle actually share
a massive enterprise customer base.
The same customers that are using Office 365
are also the same customer that are
storing their critical,
mission critical data on Oracle database.
So we have thousands of customers that we share jointly
and many of them use all sorts of different products
from both technology companies.
And, you know, multi-cloud,
as you, as you sort of rightly pointed out has become
the right approach for a lot of our customers
to be able to run applications
across different cloud providers
in a very simplistic manner.
You know, that's why we're,
you know, with this new announcement
we're reducing the complexity
of connecting these things together.
You know, all of the platform level capabilities,
the networking capabilities,
the identity management of it,
you know, we're calling this new service
Oracle database service for Microsoft Azure,
and it really brings together a,
a cohesive Azure like experience for Oracle customers.
It's, you know, it's, it's going to be a new way
to actually deploy multi-cloud applications.
>> How is this service different from
what the Oracle interconnect for Azure partnership
that you announced pre pandemic?
I think it was 2019.
>> Right, right, right.
So almost two years ago,
you know, we announced this partnership with Microsoft
that essentially interconnects the two
data center regions from, from Azure and from Oracle.
And, you know, it, it provided a great opportunity
for customers to, to start their multi-cloud journey
by making things like data transfer fees free, et cetera.
And now we're close to 11 regions globally,
you know, for those interconnected regions.
The feedback that we got from customers was,
you know, it was a great step in the right direction,
but they needed more.
And so this experience essentially builds
on top of that interconnect,
the physical interconnect on the data center side
by giving customers an Azure like experience
that allows them to basically deploy Oracle databases
in a, in a very cohesive fashion
with their Azure applications.
It also gives them things like, you know,
joint support, it gives them things like,
you know, joint billing data, et cetera.
But it basically allows them to get a first class
experience for Oracle database services,
you know, across the two clouds.
>> It's interesting.
I mean, I think back to the history of the industry,
you know, before Oracle acquired Sun
it would work with every hardware company
then of course, you know, had its own hardware.
And now it's working with, with Microsoft,
who's in essence is a platform, you know,
infrastructure company.
So it's, it's quite a, quite a journey.
Chris, I wonder,
wonder if we could bring you into the conversation.
What Oracle databases can Azure customers access now?
Where, where does autonomous fit?
Is that part of the package?
>> Yeah, absolutely.
So the, the initial offering is going to have
all flavors of the Oracle database cloud.
So that includes what we call now,
the base database, which is database in a VM,
the workhorse of the excess CS.
So if you truly need the
the extra horsepower of the exit data machine
and of course it's going to include autonomous
right out of the gate.
So for customers that want to
kick the tires on an Oracle database link with Azure
there's no faster path than using autonomous.
>> Yeah, so a lot of integration
that you guys have done.
Well, how does this service compare to other,
you know, customers like to compare,
they're always talking about their, their choices.
How does it compare to others?
How, what is the cost associated with this?
What can you tell us?
>> So from a cost stance, there there's no extra cost.
So the only cost is on the base service.
So if you get the autonomous, the base database,
the exit data, your cost is in that base service.
And we include all this plumbing that we've done
to make it work best with Azure.
And that includes wiring the metrics
the logs, the vent home, the audit records
to the Azure side of the house.
>> And, and, and what
what other things are like this out there?
Can you share with us?
What should customers, you know, compare this to?
>> So the majority of what customers have done so far
is it, it is DIY.
So multi-cloud to date has been very DIY.
Anything could be done that we've done.
However, customers that have to roll up their sleeves
they'd have to learn both clouds,
learn the nomenclature of both clouds,
they'd have to learn the networking infrastructure
and they'd really have to roll their sleeves up and DIY it.
What we've done is we've, we've done all that work for them.
So it's as simple as a few mouse clicks
and the two clouds can be talking together.
>> Thank you, okay.
Karan, you, you ever see the movie good morning Vietnam
and they redact out all the, all the, like the words
in the news that they didn't want, want read on the news.
And so we hear Microsoft and Oracle,
they're talking about multi-cloud,
Google sort of talks about unifying
cross cloud developer experiences with, with Antos.
But when you go, when you go to like reinvent
the word multi-cloud is redacted, like the movie.
Do you anticipate customers are going to push more
from multi-cloud in the future?
What are you hearing?
>> Yeah, absolutely.
I think,
I think customers are going to demand this
of their cloud providers in the future.
I think these are going to be table stakes moving forward.
You know, as, as you rightly pointed out, Dave,
I think, you know, customers and, and
and actually cloud providers are focused on
mostly transition from on-prem to the cloud.
And I think in the future,
you know, once everybody's picked their first cloud provider
it's going to be, you know,
the focus is going to shift from that to
the interoperability across these two clouds or,
or multiple clouds.
You know, customers will want to have leverage
against other cloud providers.
Customers will want to pick the best of breed,
complimentary services, et cetera,
and also have, you know,
decisions based on economics, right?
So I think, you know,
there's going to be a massive acceleration of customers
want the support from, from all of their cloud providers.
You know, which is why we're basically
simply listening to customer feedback.
And, you know, as mentioned earlier,
we share so many different customers together
it totally made sense for Microsoft and Oracle to
start investing in it.
This is not the entire answer.
I think it's start of this journey in, in the future.
>> Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see
how this plays out.
You know, I never say never with,
with the hyperscalers or any large technology company.
I, I wonder Karan, if we could stay with you.
Can you give us some practical examples of,
of what this service means for customers?
How it's going to help them do something
that they couldn't do before?
What should we be focused on?
>> Yeah, absolutely.
I think, you know,
I think it opens up a whole set of new possibilities.
You know, I, I mentioned earlier
kind of made a statement where,
you know, the world's data
kind of lives on Oracle databases.
It's, it's the core of, of any mission critical data today.
It's still the most popular database use in, in the world.
And so, you know, customers want to be able to modify
they want to be able to extract more information
and and get more knowledge out of their data.
And this opens up the possibility where you can use,
you can have access to that Oracle database
from Azure and you're able to connect it
to all the complimentary services
which allow you to extract more knowledge or,
or insight out of that data.
So whether you're moving it into,
let's say Azure synapse analytics to do analytics workloads
or whether you're moving it to
the HUD cluster using Azure HD insight,
or you're simply just looking at the data
in different forms and factors through power BI.
I think it opens up a whole new set of possibilities
you just couldn't do it before.
On the second hand, it also helps you modernize
your existing on-premise estate of Oracle.
So we have the largest backs,
the largest financial services customers,
the largest government customers
running the largest exit data footprint on premise.
It helps you modernize that into the cloud and then,
and use complimentary services from Azure.
>> Got it.
Chris, what's the support model look like
for this new service?
You know, who do I, whose throat do I choke?
>> I was going to say, so you brought us back
to when we had multiple vendors in the vendors
we've all lived through it, right.
Vendors pointed fingers at each other.
So, keeping that in mind, what we've done is
we have a collaborative plan with Microsoft in place.
So building on the, the interconnect from 2019
we have that collaborative support model.
So right in this new console that we've built
you can log a ticket
and immediately both sides will be aware of the context
and what's going on so that we can resolve those problems
and avoid the finger pruning of vendor at vendor.
>> Okay, great.
So if somebody pick up a broom and,
and start sweeping and fix the problem, I love it.
To both of you guys,
maybe you could kind of riff a little bit on the future.
I, I mean, we use this term super cloud,
which is, you know, cross multiple clouds
so you're doing that.
And we envision, you know, this
this wonderful globally distributed system where
you're not even thinking about
the underlying infrastructure.
Are you considering partnering
with other major cloud providers
to offer similar services?
Or are you going to go sort of deeper with, with Azure?
What's your feeling on that?
>> I think, you know, I think the
the capability here that we've built
isn't specific to Azure, for sure.
I think there's absolutely possibility of, of,
you know, working with other clouds in the future.
I think, you know, we'll continue to sort of listen
to our feedback from the, from our largest customers.
You know, and if the market demands,
you know, it's, it's, it's going to be,
as I said, table stakes.
And, you know, as I said earlier, and
and I think It'll be in the best interest
of all the cloud providers to just work together
in the future.
>> And, and Dave, to go
back on the other half of your question,
are we going to go deeper?
We are going to be going deeper.
So today we've gone far enough that
like I said, metrics logs, those things are flowing.
We're also in progress of looking
at the rest of the portfolio in Azure
and seeing which things can and should
integrate more tightly with OCI.
So as Karan said broader, but also deeper at the same time.
>> Great, thank you.
But my last question is,
you know, we, again,
we use this term super cloud to, to, to me anyway
and us multi-cloud has largely been running,
you know, on different clouds,
it's, it's sort of a symptom,
just kind of the way things shook out.
And maybe this, maybe super cloud is what multi-cloud
should be, but,
but what do you think are the key ingredients
that make multi-cloud real, lots of people are talking
about multi-cloud what, what makes it tangible?
>> I think, you know, to, to begin with,
I think it's, it's, it's removing the complexity
of learning new clouds, right?
I think that's the biggest challenge that customers have is
you've you've already picked one cloud,
you've, you've, you've trained your, your, your employees,
you've trained your developers
and your application, you know,
engineers and learning a new cloud,
onboarding a new cloud is an extensive challenge
and, and, you know, requires a lot of time and effort.
And I think, I think what the other cloud providers can do
is actually make sure that they provide these experiences
that office gate all of the guts
and all of the plumbing under the covers
so that the customer doesn't have to learn new things.
I think they have, they can focus on their business value
which is actually running the app and running the database.
I think they can sort of leave the infrastructure
component to the cloud providers to actually
have the right interoperability, the right APIs, et cetera.
So I think the experience
is going to be critical moving forward.
>> Kris, anything you'd add to that?
Bring us home if you would.
>> The things I would add
is back to observability and manageability.
So today a lot of customers consider themselves multi-cloud
if they're leveraging two clouds.
What we are truly talking about is
a multi-cloud workload where
a compute node on cloud A
is talking to a database on Oracle, things like that.
So then you get into the observability of the stack
so that you can monitor and react
to how the things are going.
So I think it has to go a, a hair higher
in that these, these layers of observing
the entire multi-cloud experiences in one place.
>> That's great guys.
Thanks so much for coming to The Cube and, and share.
Congratulations on the progress.
I, I love that we have you guys back
and we can see how you're moving forward,
collaborating, you know, customers, it's a win-win win
so appreciate your time.
>> Absolutely. >> Absolutely.
>> All right.
And thank you for watching.
This is Dave Vellante for The Cube.
We'll see you next time.