Oracle Cloud World 2022: Everything from the keynotes, news and more
Oracle Cloud World is done and dusted - here's what you may have missed...
We're gearing up for this morning's keynote with some much-needed coffee and pastries, before the action starts soon.
This is our first time at OCW, so we're keen to hear from the company on all its latest news.
However this morning's keynote will focus on Oracle's customer successes, with the likes of Nvidia, DeutscheBank and Red Bull Racing taking to the stage.
And we're in! This is a tech conference in Vegas, so there's bass-heavy remixes of The Weeknd and more...Safra Catz incoming soon.
We're running a little late here - the hall is at full capacity though, so hopefully we'll be underway soon!
"We're finally here in real life - we're no longer little squares on screen!" she declares.
"What we learned during the pandemic is that it is absolutely critical to have a digital conenction with your employees, your customers, your partners," Catz adds.
"Being bold is the way to win - being timid could wipe you out."
"We have built a platform that is the most secure, the most powerful, the most performant," she notes.
"Our focus over the past few years has been to listen more closely to you, to make a prodct and a serivce we can deploy in multiple ways to make you successful."
"We understand now that it's not like the old days...now your success is absolutely central to everything we do."
"These are incredible times," Huang notes, "on one hand, we're seeing the slowdown of traditional compute...making it harder for us to do our computing at an ever-decreasing cost, so we can do more."
Huang also notes how healthcare could see huge improvements and advances thanks to AI, with new treatments, cures and analysis soon available.
And with that, he's off - with a hopeful message about how Nvidia and Oracle can work effectively together in the future - so here's hoping it all comes off!
Next up is Gordon Mackechenie, CEO of Deutsche Bank, to talk about the challenges his company has faced during the pandemic and
"Demand for technology is always increasing in banking," he notes, as more digital transactions take place, and new systems are required to faciliate this, driving demand for compute and storage.
Catz asks Mackechenie if he thinks the risk-averse nature of banking affects innovation, particularly in technology.
"A huge amount of innovation in banking today is data-driven," he says, "it's really important that we innovate to move forward."
"This is an unbelievably exciting time...we've built an unbelievable partnership," Catz says.
And now for something tastier - our next guest is Groupo Bimbo CTO Raul Obregon Servitje, talking about the company's "total digital transformation" using Oracle services.
"We've stayed the course," he notes, saying the company is committed to chasing growth, investing in brands, and using the data it generates to examine new opportunities.
Our next guest is Diane Scharwz, CEO of Johnson Controls, to talk about how her company became a "truly digital enterprise" over the last few years.
It has pivoted from being just a pure manufacturing company to becoming a truly "digital managed services" company, offering a full range of heating, cooling, fire and security systems.
It's been an "inside-out" transformation, she notes - taking complexity and making it simple using a range of tech solutions.
And now another major gear change, as Safra Catz introduces from the Melissa & Doug toy company, CIO Mike Macrie, and Lee Tsukroff, CTO.
Next, it's time to hear from one of the company's biggest and most well-known partners, Red Bull Racing Formula 1 team principal Christian Horner
"As soon as we put the logo on the car, we started winning!" he notes. "We're really pushing the boundaries - it's been a great partnership so far."
Red Bull Racing is using Oracle technology to help design and build its own engine in the world's most demanding sport, having done that already with its own chassis design.
"We want to interact and understand our fans to provide a better service and better interaction with them," Horner notes.
Catz notes that she wants to take "at least some of the credit" for Red Bull Racing's success though. "We're never happy when we're not number one," she says.
And with that, it's a wrap on this morning's keynote. Catz thanks everyone for coming, and urges us to stick around for Larry Ellison's session later today - that's definitely not one to be missed, so stay tuned for more here on TechRadar Pro in a few hours' time.
And we're back! After a hearty lunch and some more caffeine, we're ready for the afternoon keynote at Oracle Cloud World, hosted by none other than Larry Ellison himself.
Excitement (and crowds) are already building around the keynote theatre, so we'll be sure to get there nice and early to see what the company's founder has to say.
We're running late here once again - seems Larry Ellison is the big draw this afternoon, with crowds still streaming in to the keynote hall.
We're expecting to hear more about Oracle's forward-looking strategy, outlook, and almost certainly a few curveballs as always.
There's a mysterious single chair on the stage - what could it be for? Our money is on a ventriloquist's act...
Well, we're about to find out - the lights go down and the music goes up as we welcome Larry Ellison to the stage.
"It's been a long time since I've done this" he says, in a similar note to CEO Safra Catz in this morning's keynote.
Ellison says he's here to talk about two main things - open multi-cloud infrastructure, and complete end-to-end industry applications.
"Companies are already dealing with multiple providers and applications when buying infrastructure in the cloud," he says. "The fact that this is happening is changing the behavior of technology providers."
But a better idea is connecting all the main clouds, so that customers have choices, Ellison notes - creating an "internet of clouds" or multicloud. Oracle working with Microsoft helped kick this off, he notes.
Ellison is making a big pitch for multicloud services here - or as he charmingly calls it, "an internet of clouds".
"There should be an internet of clouds, the clouds should be interconnected, and you should mix and match between multiple clouds," he says, "the garden walls come tumbling down."
"The idea again, is providing customers with choices"
After a quick drink of water, Ellison moves on to next-generation applications - primarily in healthcare.
"What do I mean by next-generation?" he says, "We're going to automate everything, end-to-end."
Ellison outlines how currently there are "provider-centric healthcare services" - each hospital builds and operates its own information system - so it stays in their database.
"Sharing those records are very difficult - your health records are scattered across different databases, everyone you've visited in your entire life," he says.
Providers, not patients, are being put at the center of the system he says - and that's "a fundamental problem."
"There'll soon be a single place where you go to find out your healthcare records," he says.
Ellison admits that this is a hugely ambitious goal - "what we are trying to be done has never been tried before - so can it be done?"
"We know we can't use the same set of tools to build these applications," he says - it's just too costly and time-consuming, plus the services need to be secure, resilient and easy to use.
"We need a completely new set of tools...we have to develop 10 times faster," he adds, noting that Oracle did just that during the pandemic, building new tools for the CEC. But it will need partners, including the University of Oxford, CEC and a number of independent software companies.
The Cerner deal wasn't the catalyst, though - Ellison notes that the work was already underway.
Ellison is now outlining the next-generation apps that Oracle has already built with its partners, including the University of Oxford and AMD.
Oracle already had a good track record with managing vaccines, rolling out yellow fever vaccines campaigns in Ghana.
This change is vital, Ellison says, warning, "we're going to bankrupt western civilziation" unless we can find a way to make healthcare cheaper.
"We've got to do a better job," he declares.
Why is there a global financial database, but not a global healthcare one, Ellison asks.
If you have an accident abroad, the hospital will know your financial records, how much you make, but not if you're allergic to penicillin.
This is clearly an issue close to Ellison's heart - we're being walked through his exact motivations behind building a new national EHR database, and why this matters so much.
"We have to catch the next pandemic earlier," he says.
Making it easier for patients to engage with their healthcare providers, carers and even governments is another area ripe for improvement, Ellison says.
Now on to Cerner.
"We're working with Cerner to take your existing medical interface and update it," Ellison says.
"It seems like magic - but that's just how things will be."
"It's not magic, it's how all of our applications work," Ellison concludes. "We're absolutely committed to this mission."
And with that - he's off! A rather abrupt end to what was clearly a deeply personal topic for the Oracle founder, and certainly a keynote that was anything like what we expected.
So that's it for day one of Oracle Open World, with two jam-packed keynotes wowing the crowds.
Thanks for staying with us today - join us tomorrow when there are two more keynotes, focusing more on the company's product offerings, and hopefully several more surprises as well!
Good morning and welcome to day two of Oracle Cloud World!
After day one's excitement and keynotes, we're getting technical here this morning. First up is a keynote from Executive Vice President Clay Magouyrk focusing on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
Later, we'll hear from Steve Miranda, Executive Vice President of Oracle Applications product development, who'll talk us through Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications.
Probably the most exciting news (from the media desks at least) is that we've been upgraded into a new seating area that is far more central than where we were yesterday....and should mean we can actually take nicer pictures of this morning's keynote!
We're underway here as Clay Magouyrk (whose name I will doubtless misspell several times this morning) takes to the stage.
"If you're not interested in cloud infrastructure, you're going to have a bad time," he jokes.
OCI is growing, Magouyrk notes, with 40 regions live and 7 more planned. This includes specially-designed regions to handle particularly sensitive workloads, as well as those to deal with stringent EU data requirements.
After a few customer examples showing how customers are using OCI for use cases from earthquake monitoring to sports tracking to boat racing, it's time to welcome Kelsey Szot, co-founder and project lead at AI company Adept.
Next, Magouyrk wants to look at the innovation that's coming up across OCI, focusing on some particularly exciting new announcements.
The company is also launching GPU Super Clusters, with more power than ever, making them "the most powerful supercomputers available on the planet," says Magouyrk.
There's also MongoDB compatibility, bringing together OCI and the leading document database service around today.
Magouyrk also announces Privacy Assurance, a collection of upgrades for its security, compliance and privacy offerings, assuring trusted data never leaves the audit boundary, and also automates compliance.
OCI wants to build "the new distributed cloud", Magouyrk says, including the ability to bring in data from other clouds, and having predictable and controlled running costs.
OCI Dedicated Region is a big part of this, allowing your business to have control and operate all of the systems you need.
"You've got public cloud right where you want it," says Magouyrk.
"The secret to success for us is really around our digital transformation," he says.
"We're not stopping here," Magouyrk says, noting how Oracle is looking to bring "everything available in our public cloud and bring it into a single rack."
This brings us to Oracle Alloy, the company's latest release to help with infrastructure control.
Magouyrk explains it as "bringing the best we have at Oracle with the best our local operators will have, in order to combine our strengths."
Oracle Alloy provides the same tools Oracle uses, so customers can build and create their own new services.
But it isn't just software, the platform will also allow you to bring your own hardware to address your particular needs
But what if you don't want to be a cloud provider? Magouyrk says that it does matter, as everyone wants better products at lower prices, and infrastructure control allows for this, meaning the power of the cloud can be realized by more people than ever.
82% of large enterprises use multiple clouds, Magouyrk says - a 27% increase from last year, showing that there is still no one perfect offering around today.
But Oracle is also happy to combine other' services with OCI, Magouryk says, as well as improving the interoperability between clouds.
After a quick demo, Magouyrk now moves on to the "future of cloud" to wrap up.
"I genuinely believe it's the highest productivity tool we have at Oracle," he says.
And with that, it's a wrap here on this morning's session!
We're off to go check out the show floor and get some coffee, and we'll be back with this afternoon's keynote in a few hours.
We're back, and seated for the final keynote from Steve Miranda, Executive Vice President of Oracle Applications product development.
Set to focus on Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications, we're expecting to hear more on what the company sees as its role in helping users across several different industries, as well as the usuall mix of customer stories and product announcements.
First up is a run-through of the company's position right now. Navigating an uncertain world is tricky for all companies, he notes, with Oracle pivoting and changing to address new needs and demands.
"The companies and individuals that embraced change came out better," he says.
There are plenty of issues affecting the world today, Miranda notes - but also plenty of opportunities offered by technology.
"There's one thing for certain - things will change, and the speed of change is only going to get faster and faster," he says.
"We're going to change how all that works," he says.
"We're always looking for ways to make our customer's lives easier", Georgakopoulos notes. "This is a big space for innovation, but we know we can't do it on our own...which is why we're excited to be working with Oracle."
Miranda explains that the new service will cut down on the complexity and time it takes to make payments of all kinds.
Business travellers will appreciate the new expense filing policies, Georgakopoulos says, which make sorting and filing receipts easier than ever.
"We're quite proud to offer nearly everything that your business might need today," he notes, "we're 100% focused on your success".
"We believe we have the most complete portfolio of applications and infrastructure around."
Oracle's brand-new Redwood user interface looks to offer customers around the world a much simpler and more straightforward approach, again removing complexity and increasing efficiency.
"It's looking great," Miranda says admiringly.
"It's the most complete suite, and everything you need," he says.
To tell us more, Javier Echave, CFO at London's Heathrow Airport, comes on stage to join Miranda.
Echave likens Spider-man's iconic quote of "with great power comes great responsibility" to the concerns that Heathrow has - and luckily Oracle is able to help, offering the tools and support the airport needs.
Finally (for this section at least) Miranda highlights some of the work Oracle does across education, health provisions, sustainability and more.
Miranda now moves on to the section he says he's most proud of - focusing on how Oracle is focused on helping its customers succeed.
Mirandas' last customer is Jeanine Carlucci, head of employee digital & service experience at JP Morgan Chase & Co, who wants to highlight the work it does with helping its 300,000-odd workers across 70 countries excel.
Wrapping up, Miranda thanks us all for coming along, and hopes Oracle can be the key to help all its customers succeed.
And with that, it's a wrap here at Oracle Cloud World 2022! Thank you so much for staying with TechRadar Pro through what has been an action and news-packed few days. Stay tuned for further write-ups from the show, and of course, all the latest B2B and B2C tech news you need.