Reporting on location from Oracle CloudWorld, I connect with Tom Smith and share top takeaways from day two of the conference. We discuss the keynotes by CEO Safra Catz and Chairman Larry Ellison, as well as the contrarian perspectives that Ellison brings to bear that fuel technology innovation.
Highlights
CEO Safra Catz’s Keynote (01:23)
The Catz keynote featured six customers, including MGM Resorts International CEO Bill Hornbuckle who explained how technology is enabling companies to devote more of their investments to delighting customers and less on tech integration. She also had the CIO of the CIA, La’Naia Jones, who talked about the flexibility Oracle gives the CIA — one of its earliest customers from the 1970s — to fulfill its very complex mission. Catz emphasized the importance of having courage and jumping into new technology with partners. The customers said they’re looking to transform themselves with the help of AI to become more customer-oriented, fast-moving digital businesses.
Larry Ellison Keynote — Multi-Cloud Partnerships (05:58)
Ellison recently turned 80 years young. He would have every reason in the world to fall on ideas that have been used for the last 50 years. Instead, he turned things upside down: He initiated the idea of multi-cloud partnerships and, with the new AWS multi-cloud partnership, Oracle has them with the other three hyperscalers — Microsoft, Google Cloud, and AWS. He invited AWS CEO Matt Garman to the stage and they talked about the benefits to customers. They were joined by Andrew Zitney, CTO of State Street Bank, who said the partnership yields great innovation and transformation opportunities for State Street.
Security Focus (10:46)
Ellison’s keynote also covered security in the cloud, from the perspectives of data, applications, ID management, and network security. There are big innovations from Oracle across all of those. Ellison had some scathing comments about passwords, saying they’re the worst possible tool to achieve better security. When they create longer passwords, people write them down and they’re easier to steal. He advocates separating network security and performance: Build the best network you can, then create the right type of security to protect data and the network.
Contrarian Perspective and Nuclear-Powered Data Centers (12:03)
Ellison will be known most for being a very effective contrarian. There are lots of contrarians but not all of them can actually get stuff done. Oracle is currently constructing what it says is, if not the largest, one of the largest data centers in the world — 800 megawatts — and it has designs for a gigawatt-plus data center. Included in the building plans are three nuclear reactors that will be adjacent to the data center so there’s no latency in supplying the power. He also said the size of a complete Oracle Cloud is always shrinking — they can now fit inside the AWS Cloud, inside the Azure Cloud, and inside Google Cloud. The company is building the largest data centers and very small ones that will go into customer locations.
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