Speaker 1: 0:23

Welcome to Techzine TV.

Speaker 2: 0:28

Welcome to this new episode of Techzine Talks. I'm here with Ashish Gray, the VP Mission Critical Database Technologies at Oracle. Welcome to the show, Ashish.

Speaker 3: 0:39

Thank you. Thank you, Sander, for having me.

Speaker 2: 0:42

Yeah, I mean I'm going to talk about something quite major that recently happened. It was the Oracle Database AWS. It wasn't a launch. It was a launch, but it was the GA, basically because the actual announcement was made last year during Oracle Cloud World, right. So and now we actually have a GA, so that means that people can actually start buying it and using it, right.

Speaker 3: 1:09

Exactly, that's right.

Speaker 2: 1:11

So just talk me through the first sort of the six months, or seven months or eight months, I don't know. It was October, right? So we're now in July. So the nine months leading up to the GA, what's been the chatter following the announcement? How popular was it in your conversations that you had with people?

Speaker 3: 1:31

Yeah, the conversation has been extremely engaging. As you know, between AWS and Oracle we have a lot of joint enterprise customers and these customers they might have chosen AWS for their overall cloud strategy but at the same time many of the mission critical data set continue to live on Oracle databases. In many cases these databases still reside on premises. So they have been very eager to see us move forward with the GA because then that gives them a real opportunity to do data and IT modernization, basically combining the best of the both worlds.

Speaker 2: 2:08

So, absolutely, this was also something that a lot of customers really wanted, right.

Speaker 1: 2:13

Yes, exactly.

Speaker 2: 2:14

Because, even though there has been a sort of an acrimonious past between the two companies, but not anymore, which is good because that's, at the end of the day, it's what customers want and that counts right In this, in these things.

Speaker 3: 2:27

Yes, so you know, like both of our mission is like making sure that our joint solutions work best for the customer. So, absolutely, this is a win-win situation for everyone, especially for the customers.

Speaker 2: 2:38

Yeah, so just talk us through a little bit about what exactly is it right. Oracle Database AWS.

Speaker 3: 2:46

Yeah, so what we are doing with this is giving customers the option, the flexibility, to use Oracle Database with its full functionality, and full functionality includes Oracle Database 23, ai. It includes our high availability and scalability capabilities, such as Oracle real application clusters, full functionality and flexibility on Exadata and Exadata is our premier Oracle database platform. It's an engineer system that provides the best availability, scalability, reliability and security for Oracle databases. In fact, exadata is the mission critical platform of choice for most of our customers worldwide. So it gives customers the option to run Oracle database on Exadata within AWS cloud regions. So that means immediately improving by an order of magnitude on the latency between applications and database access.

Speaker 2: 3:43

Yeah so so, to put it into sort of perspective, there is actual Oracle hardware in AWS data centers in those regions.

Speaker 3: 3:50

Yes, absolutely. We are deploying Oracle Exadata along with all the network integration plus, of course, the control plane and the data plane integration between AWS and Oracle cloud regions inside the AWS region Initially. As you might have seen from our press release, this is now generally available in AWS's US East and US West regions with multiple availability zones, and we have plans to extend this in the next several months for 20 more AWS regions around the world.

Speaker 2: 4:25

Yeah, and just to try, because it has always been possible to run Oracle databases in AWS, right? So in that sense it's not new, but it is completely different, right, from the old way of running Oracle databases on AWS.

Speaker 3: 4:42

Yes, yes, so you're absolutely right, Sander. It has been possible to run Oracle database on AWS, but with limited functionality. This was primarily available through what's called AWS RDS, the Relational Database Service for Oracle.

Speaker 3: 4:58

And sometimes some customers might have deployed Oracle database on AWS EC2, which is the compute offering, but those solutions did not have features such as Oracle RAC, they did not have features such as Oracle Exadata, they did not have complete integration with Oracle cloud infrastructure. That's our own OCI. So with this solution we are providing basically a very powerful, most functional Oracle database offering on Xerator without any restriction and with complete backend and network integration between OCI and AWS and again, as I mentioned, it's a complete win-win for the customer.

Speaker 2: 5:37

Yeah, so is it possible to quantify this? How much more performance is this new solution compared to the old way of doing things? Or is that not? Or is it completely different use cases maybe Do you still? Expect people to still do? You still expect companies to still run some of the databases on AWS actually, not necessarily on this thing side by side.

Speaker 3: 6:00

Yes, so there are two parts to this question, sander. So the first part is hey, what about performance quantification? And the second thing is what do you see about the customer journey? So let's address them one at a time. So, with regards, to the performance quantification immediately.

Speaker 3: 6:16

What Exadata provides customers is significant benefits with regards to overall performance in the Exadata land. We call it extreme performance, literally millions of IOPS per second. And also database IO latency in the order of single, in the order of low double digit microseconds. So, for example, in the latest generation of Exadata, which is Exadata X11M, we have noticed that the database server and the compute server, the database server and the storage server, I latencies, block I latencies, could be as low as 14 microseconds. This is measured and load from SQL. This is an immense performance benefits to the customer immediately.

Speaker 2: 7:02

For which workload is this very important.

Speaker 3: 7:06

Yes, overall, iops andPS and IO latencies are very critical for, or low IO latencies are very critical for mission critical OLTP like workloads which need very fast access to data, and similarly, in Exadata, also for analytic queries, that is, for analytics workload.

Speaker 3: 7:24

We have tremendous functionality with Exadata native features such as smart scan storage indexes, which can offer scan bandwidth at a tremendous performance advantage compared to other ways of doing this. Now you ask a very interesting question, sander what kind of workload? These days, sander, we see that the workloads, especially for modern data management needs, are all getting blurred, merged. What I mean by that? Especially with AI-based workloads, gen AI-based workloads. We see that traditional OLTP, bam workloads merging with analytic workloads and merging with AI-based workloads. All of this needs to be happening at a blazing speed as part of the same transaction, and so that is why, with our converged database function, such as with Oracle Database 23, ai, plus the support of underlying platform, which is Exadata, plus the integration that we have done with AWS and OCI, all of this combined to be a highly effective solution for modern data workloads.

Speaker 2: 8:34

Okay, and can you talk me through? When you talk about integration with AWS, what did we need to think about? Are there physical connectors between the Oracle hardware and the AWS hardware, or maybe some other software-defined kind of things? What are those things?

Speaker 3: 8:54

Yes, so it is actually everything.

Speaker 3: 8:57

So in NetNet, the integration is process integration plus the technology integration.

Speaker 3: 9:03

Let me talk about the technology integration. With regards to the technology integration, see, when we put Exadata systems or Exadata platform inside the AWS, that means the Exadata platform has to be visible to an AWS customer in a completely user-friendly and abstracted way. That means all the network integrations, the physical network integration that we have to make that happen. All of that needs to be completely transparent to the end user. The end user, when they are seeing, okay, let's deploy Oracle Database on Exadata, but they are seeing this through the AWS console, that means all of this needs to happen in an extremely seamless and transparent manner. So, netnet, it is both hardware and software integration that we have to do, and that's why everything that we have to do involves meticulous engineering between the two engineering teams, between AWS and Oracle. And that is why, when we are making sure that, okay, everything works end-to-end at a significant performance benefit, scalability benefit, security benefit by an order of magnitude, only then we win a position. So, okay, let's now release this part yeah, because it also.

Speaker 2: 10:17

It also brought the product teams from both sides closer together, I would imagine. Right, because otherwise you, you will never be able to do this, something like this.

Speaker 3: 10:26

Absolutely. And then let me touch upon the process, integration also, sander. And then I will also touch upon the customer journey, because you did mention that. What about customers who may have databases?

Speaker 1: 10:37

That's right.

Speaker 3: 10:41

So for the process integration, sander, we had to make sure that the purchase experience is absolutely seamless, and the same thing for the support experience. So both of these are important from a process standpoint and that is the net-net of both the technical and the process integration, such that customers can have a unified experience across both the clouds. So from a procurement standpoint, we have put together a very simplified procurement experience via AWS Marketplace, which means our customers can now use their existing AWS commitments and Oracle license benefits also, such as the BYUL, which is bring your own license, and we have discount programs such as Oracle Support Rewards with Oracle Database and AWS. And from a support experience also, it's a unified support experience. Customers can file their any support issues with either AWS or Oracle and then we will have our support and technical leads and engineers work together through combined solution of any of their issues. And then also we will provide guidance through reference architecture Also. We'll guidance through reference architecture best practices that our combined customers can take benefit of. Okay.

Speaker 3: 12:06

So I can help with the customer journey. Should I?

Speaker 2: 12:09

Yeah, we can talk about that later. I just wanna have one sort of impromptu question are there also going to be oracle engineers and aws data centers now to actually do some maintenance and all that stuff? Or did, or or will you train aws to actually do the maintenance on the oracle gear that's there?

Speaker 3: 12:26

yeah, this will happen both ways. Um, you know, these days with technology, um, often we see that sending engineers directly to data centers is often not required. Many cases, with secure connections, we are able to address any issues that may come up, naturally. But with regards to technical engineers visiting AWS regions or AWS data centers, yes, that will be an evolving process and we will work at the back end to make sure that any customer experience continues to be unified.

Speaker 2: 12:58

And I also have one question about the licensing, because it's not entirely clear to me. So can you, as an AWS customer and an Oracle customer, can you use your AWS commitment to actually get Oracle database AWS as well, so without actually having Oracle credits or licenses? I wanna get it clearer.

Speaker 3: 13:21

Yes, yes, so definitely, customers can use their existing AWS commitments for Oracle for this particular solution, that is, oracle databasease at AWS and, as I mentioned previously this, they can go through the entire procurement experience like the way they do traditionally with AWS, which is through AWS Marketplace. Yeah, okay.

Speaker 2: 13:41

So now about the customer journey or the workloads that they're, because you want to talk about that very, very, very eagerly. I can see that. So what's the? So what about that? What kind of workloads do you expect people to run, or or what kind of journeys, uh, will companies be on to to get to this new offering?

Speaker 3: 14:01

yes, yeah. So let's go through the customer journey in a sense. So today, customers may have, for example, running their oracle databases on premises, and this is a very attractive value proposition for them. So what do they do next, assuming they already have some AWS deployments, maybe through, like, some AWS applications or AI tools or other AWS solutions? So the first thing is migration. So we have a very flexible solution called Oracle Zero Downtime Migration, which facilitates the migration of on-premises database to the cloud database in AWS. So that's that. So with that, they can do this migration with no downtime to their applications and once the migration is done, applications can simply switch over to the new Oracle database that is now running on AWS. So that's the beginning part of the journey, and then ongoing is okay.

Speaker 3: 14:56

Now they're looking at two ways of data, and the one way of data is hey, I already have some applications running on AWS. How can I make best use of this Oracle database now that is on AWS with minimum latency? So we have done integration. We have done integration through the AWS Identity and Access Management, aws CloudFormation, cloudwatch, amazon VPC, lattice, amazon EventBridge. So with all these native integration in place, using AWS applications that are already inherent or native in AWS ecosystem. With Oracle Database, it becomes a very seamless and transparent experience for our customers.

Speaker 3: 15:42

Going forward with the journey, as I mentioned these days, sander, that the data management needs requirements are very complex and they are getting more and more sophisticated, especially with AI data management. So what can happen? That customers can leverage the AWS AI ecosystem with their production data that is now in Oracle Database with minimum latency, like real time. So a financial services company, for example, can combine real-time transactional data from Oracle database with customer interaction data that may already be on AWS to look for patterns within seconds as part of like a dashboard that offers comprehensive fraud detection. Similarly, in retail customers then can also integrate inventory data. So again in print, trade data that is resident in Oracle database with AWS ML models that are resident in AWS to enable dynamic pricing strategies for personalization of offers.

Speaker 2: 16:47

And in terms of operations, that's also one of the things that is very important for a lot of companies, right? So how do you keep everything going, how do you manage it, how do you change things? And so is that accessible from a single console for customers? Because, you mentioned, you are taking the service off of the AWS marketplace, right? You are taking the service off of the AWS marketplace, right? So can you also manage these things from an AWS console and or from an Oracle console?

Speaker 3: 17:17

Yes, customers can choose either. So, for example, they can continue to use familiar AWS tools such as AWS Management Console or any AWS command line interface that they're familiar with. On the other hand, if they want to use, say, oci dashboards or OCI metrics to manage individual databases line interface that they're familiar with, on the other hand, if they want to use a oci dashboards or oci metrics to manage individual databases, absolutely they can do that. So it works both ways. And that's the beauty of this solution, sander. When we do integration, we really mean it in a sense that, okay, let there be no walled gardens, let there be complete transparency and integration process and technology across the both clouds, and really that's how it should be, sander.

Speaker 2: 17:58

Yeah, I agree, and I think what I also am interested in is is this the same kind of Oracle database offering as the others that you have, or is it different in some ways? Because that would be interesting for me to know at least.

Speaker 3: 18:14

Fundamentally, from an Oracle database standpoint, it's fundamentally the same Oracle database. So if you pick, say, Oracle Database 23 AI, it is fundamentally the same. Oracle Database 23 AI, the same Oracle 19c. And that's the beauty of a converged data management architecture it's absolutely portable across on-premises, across hybrid cloud, across our own cloud and multi-cloud, across the three hyperscalers. And that gives customers the tremendous flexibility to move around and again, that's the whole idea of let there be no walled gardens to move around without any application changes and they know that they have the same availability and performance assurance when they transition across multiple clouds.

Speaker 2: 18:58

Do you see in practice? I mean, do you see a lot of companies having more than two clouds at the moment already, Because that usually was at least as far as I'm informed by people that usually was the upper limit nowadays, or at least up until recently. Maybe they've expanded, but usually two is the limit. What are your experiences?

Speaker 3: 19:19

It's hard to say what is the limit. We do see multiple clouds in effect in many companies and you know like some companies, or most companies, might have started with one cloud because that's their cloud strategy. And then what happens? Having multiple clouds help on the resilience right and help them with also the overall scale aspects of cloud. Maybe it also gives them some leverage across clouds because maybe, like in one cloud, they may have like the best commercial benefits on one aspect. For other cloud they have the better commercial benefits on another aspect. It so, yes, multiple clouds. And the other thing that happens, sander, is companies go through mergers and acquisitions, right, so when one company acquires some other company, that some other company might have come to their IT platform with some other cloud provider. And that's the beauty of the Oracle database. Now, you see, oracle database fundamentally it's the same very powerful database across these clouds, so it gives them absolute portability despite any business level changes.

Speaker 2: 20:18

And, to be clear, it doesn't mean that companies have to move all of their AWS databases into Oracle or all of their on-prem Oracle databases into this Oracle database, AWS offering right, so you can still use multiple different databases if you want to right.

Speaker 3: 20:39

Yes they absolutely can, and that's the beauty of this. We give them the choice. So and it's all part of the customer journey, sander they can start on this journey and see what makes the best sense and especially with the integrations and the scalability benefits that we offer in this, in this solution, without any restriction. Another, another very interesting integration that we have done is done is the integration with Amazon's or AWS zero ATL solution. So when they see that, when they see that they can deploy Oracle database, especially 23 AI, without any restriction, without any rack, without on with the most available and performing platforms such as Exadata, this will continue to be the most functional and powerful Oracle database offering, but it will be part of the journey, as they do migration to this solution.

Speaker 2: 21:32

Yeah, and especially I think you mentioned zero ETL. I think if you say that to people, they always get quite excited, because ETL usually is one of the biggest issues with data pipelines and all that thing that you have to build and those kind of vanish.

Speaker 3: 21:47

Now, right, yes, absolutely With this, and this is again part of the core engineering work that needs to happen as part of this GA. You know we make the GA announcement but leading up to the GMA, all this complex, sophisticated engineering is happening. So with this ETL integration between Oracle database at AWS and AWS analytics service, for example, the data now can move seamlessly from database to other AWS services, eliminating the need to build and manage complex data pipelines. And, of course, there are no data egress fees, so that really works well for our customers.

Speaker 2: 22:21

And it also shows how deep this integration is, because if you can actually do it without ETL, basically without a pipeline, that's what you're doing right. So that must be a very deep integration, that must be a Right.

Speaker 3: 22:33

Yeah, and this is part of the overall trend. Sander you asked is there? Two is the limit or three is the limit? Overall broader trend is to provide customers with the flexibility and choice to run databases and services anywhere, wherever it makes the most business sense, and that has been our mantra.

Speaker 2: 22:53

Yeah well, it's certainly served you well that you did this approach. I mean, Oracle is doing quite well in the market at the moment, so that's maybe not only because of the Oracle DataPositive AWS offering, but I mean it's a part of it, right, Because it's part of the bigger strategy that you outlined about five, six years ago or something.

Speaker 3: 23:10

Yes, Sander, I've been in this database world for several years and I can tell you that it's an absolutely exciting time to be in this whole area of data. With all the innovations that is happening around the world of databases, the new workloads, such as GNI workloads it's absolutely exciting. And it's equally exciting to see the big cloud companies coming together, whether it's OCI, AWS, Azure, Google they're all coming together and making sure that we offer joint solutions with the least business friction, and that means a lot to our joint customers.

Speaker 2: 23:44

And then, just finally, because we have lots of listeners that are actually active in the IT space. So DBAs and people like that will their job change fundamentally by people like that. Will their job change fundamentally by developments like these and with the hybrid and the multi-cloud kind of approach that a lot of companies are taking now?

Speaker 3: 24:03

Yes, I think the job will change in the sense that they will now have access to broader technology and business areas that otherwise they could not do. So I look at it as like the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Previously, they would be working on isolated manner because of all the restrictions that existed. Now the restrictions went away, and especially with AI. Now there are phenomenally new ways to look at resident data and figure out how we can drive or unlock more productivity out of the data for the company's business benefits.

Speaker 2: 24:37

So it's absolutely phenomenal time to be data engineers but they may have to sort of learn new, new things every now and again, or maybe be open to change, because this is a fundamentally different game now, right, compared to about 10 years ago certainly exciting learning opportunities well it's going to be.

Speaker 2: 24:55

And and then lastly, before I forget, because obviously the GA was in two regions in North America, but I think there are about 20 regions more coming up right. So a couple of them in Europe, a couple of them in Europe, a couple of them in some other areas.

Speaker 3: 25:08

Yes, we have 20 plus regions that are coming up, so that definitely includes Europe-based deployments such as Frankfurt, ireland, london, milan, stockholm, paris, zurich. And then we have a whole bunch of other regions across the Americas and across APAC, and we have listed them all in our press release.

Speaker 2: 25:27

Yeah, and me coming from the Netherlands. Obviously AWS doesn't have a region here, they have a local zone. Are there any plans, or maybe are you thinking about also including it in local zones, or is that something you can talk about yet?

Speaker 3: 25:43

Yeah, all of this, sander, will be driven by customer demand and so this is a very dynamic area. Naturally, this is driving a lot of excitement around the world. So, if you see certain parts of the world, whether there are demands for full-fledged regions or just zones, will satisfy Combined between Oracle and AWS. We will continue to look at this customer demand and we will respond accordingly.

Speaker 2: 26:09

Yeah, so there's no fundamental reason or technical reason or whatever reason not to do it. You could if you wanted to, but the demand has to be there. Yes, yes, okay. Well, that makes sense. All right, I think we're almost out of time. Thank you very much for giving us this insightful extra information on Oracle Database at AWS.

Speaker 3: 26:34

Absolutely, sander. It has been very exciting to talk to you in this podcast. Yes, thank you, thanks.

Speaker 1: 26:46

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