 Live from San Francisco. Extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE. Covering Oracle OpenWorld 2015. Brought to you by Oracle. Now your hosts, John Furrier and Jeff Frick. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here live in San Francisco for exclusive coverage of Oracle OpenWorld. On Howard Street, they closed down in San Francisco with 60,000 attendees. This is SiliconANGLE Media's theCUBE, our flagship program where we go out to the event and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconANGLE, Joe McCose, Jeff Frick, GM of theCUBE. Our next guest is John Chorley, Chief Sustainability Officer and Group Bites President of SEM Product Strategy at Oracle. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. Great to be here. So Larry Ellison mentioned on his keynote a lot of accomplishments in your area. What does he mean? Let's go right there first. What was he referring to? Big plug in the keynote. Where's the innovation? What's happening? Why is he bringing that up? What's the importance? Well, for the first time we are delivering, any company, we're delivering manufacturing solutions on the cloud for our manufacturing customer base. First enterprise class, broad base set of manufacturing solutions and they're available now for Oracle. He called it a significant achievement. Absolutely, it's been a long time coming, a lot of development work. Sure, clearly supply chain applications is a lot of different aspects to running a supply chain in a business. You've got to cover your order management process, your manufacturing process, your product design process, procurement processes, all of those have specific requirements needed for manufacturing companies and we've built a whole new set of applications to support all of that. You know, I was taken back by that as well and being from the old client server generation back in the days when I used to work for HP, I remember some of the early implementations, it's a broad suite of capabilities. Absolutely, absolutely. So moving to the cloud, not as bolted to the cloud. Exactly so. And of course, we didn't just take what we had and moved it to the cloud, we actually really looked at what constitutes modern supply chain applications, what business problems are people trying to solve and really built that into our software, great new user interfaces, built-in analytics, all of the support of the modern technologies people want, combined with real flexible business processes. It's interesting, this cloud transformation really feels like to me, kind of what happened with ERP and supply chain management 20 years ago, you know, massive fat taken out of the system, significant change in the way business process is done. And now you're taking this next giant transformation within the cloud and wrapping it back into... Absolutely, I mean, what we've seen frankly is somewhat of a growth of complexity. People have brought on board new systems to deal with the way people now do business, all of the different channels they have to support, the different ways they manufacture outsourced, in-sourced, near-sourced, all of those things have added a lot of complexity to their current systems. And they really need a way of implementing a new solution that addresses that. Does that natively, if you like, does that using modern technology and a modern user experience? Rick Jewel on your team, Oracle, was quoted saying that this cloud suite represents about 80% of the broad market requirements just in the cloud. Absolutely. I mean, that's pretty compelling. I want to make sure that people know that's pretty amazing actually. But I want you to tease out the question that I have, which is, is it true that you could run the app on-prem or on the cloud 100%? That's correct. Absolutely. Oracle's policy regarding our cloud applications is that we will make them available on the cloud. This release that we're planning to deliver by the end of this year, release 11, will be a cloud-only release. Our policy in general is every third release is available on-premise. So talk about the modern supply chain vision because that's a big thing. Obviously, there's a lot of customers out there that have the supply chains, very important. How does that differentiate from the competition? Well, clearly we've looked at what the challenges are in current systems, and we've really addressed that by building a brand new set of capabilities. Those capabilities really deliver powerful analytics to the end user in a very user-friendly way, so you can really get more out of the system. You can engage your workforce more effectively. We've also looked at the extension of certain processes. For example, the design process of new products. We really embrace the idea of crowdsourcing new ideas, bringing that input from your customer base, from your internal employees, engaging those employees in the product design process. And you can look at many other aspects of our solutions where we really take an approach of delivering that complete solution, but bundling it in a way that's very consumable, easy and fast to implement, and can adapt constantly because you can take new upgrades, because it's on the cloud. I wanted to follow up on your comment about the crowdsourcing, because it is a different era in that people are not just focused on the data within their own silos, the data is right in their own companies, but now bringing external data. And I would imagine, for supply chain, the impact of starting to bring in things like weather and a plethora of things really now impact again fine-tuning that supply chain. Yeah, supply chains now really have to be tuned to all of those different dimensions. You know, you can be impacted by negative events anywhere in the world. You have to be able to respond to that, building in that responsiveness in the application so you can rapidly iterate your plan, adapt to a change, also engaging, as you say, all of the different aspects of your sales channels, making sure that you understand what each customer needs individually. And increasingly, that's the requirement. You can't just have one business, you have to have multiple businesses each optimized for their given sales channel. And then supply chain is way out ahead of the curve on IoT, right? You have triple and putting RFID tags on pallets and chips for a long, long time, but now IoT is going a whole nother level. The distribution of devices, the power of those devices, connectivity. So again, a whole nother kind of ratcheting up of data to feed that supply chain. Yeah, the ability to connect those signals from an IoT-type device, engage that with the internet, make that available directly into an application lets you really sense conditions that previously there was a big lag in getting that data. Now you can bring them directly in, think about triggering some kind of maintenance work, think about triggering some replenishment activity. It's a very exciting development. You know, we love to monitor the hallway conversations. In this case, the Howard Street Conversations in the crowd and customers. And really, we started to see a little bit of scuttlebut on your division about three years ago, right? The chains really from a massive, okay, we're starting to see it. Is that kind of like, was at the moment in time, we said, hey, that started then, or was the start, what's some of the history around this movement? Because again, significant achievement to have broad-based 100% of cloud offering. Right. And when did it start? I mean, was it three years ago that it started rolling thunder three years ago? Well, I would say in general supply chain has been a little slower to adopt cloud. And part of that is frankly, the solutions haven't been available, not enterprise class solutions like we're delivering now. So that's kind of slowed things up. There's also been, I think, a certain conservatism in certain sectors, but that really changed in supply chain in certain key areas. Transportation, for example, has really led the move to the cloud. And we now have the best transportation solution available on the cloud, by none. What we've seen over the last couple of years is really ERP. ERP has become mainstream cloud deployment. And then from that, you can really logically extrapolate that the same is going to happen into the supply chain solutions, broad-based manufacturing, auto management, all of those solutions moving to the cloud. So I want to talk about some of the personnel, kind of the sales motion and our customer interactions. Also ERP and your business is very client sensitive. Absolutely. Belly-to-belly sales, service. Really kind of had a good track record. Oracle has a great track record of providing great customer support. Because it's a big ticket item, it's important. How has cloud changed that? I mean, we're hearing here in the show that you had some great early adopters coming on board and that, you know, VPs and senior managers are on each account or each early adopter. Can you explain, is that true one? Is it true? And can you give some color to some of the customers? Our goal really is to have just fabulous success with our early customers. We just, you know, we understand that's how you build a business. And so we're going to be completely committed to making those early customers successful. So we have a formal program around that, help train their implementers, engagement, advice presidents, you know, as a key point of contact to streamline any challenges they may occur. We want to come back next open world and really talk about a whole bunch of successful implementations. The customers won't necessarily lose the intimacy of the relationship with Oracle, although the cloud will streamline a lot of things for them standing up, stop being more agile and more secure as you guys are promoting. But you have support for them. I think the great thing about cloud, frankly, is that you're in a long-term relationship with your cloud provider. You know, it's not a question of, okay, we sold you the software and, you know, good luck. It's a question of a long-term engagement and we expect to sell some solutions and then later sell some more solutions because we've delivered value. And that kind of move towards a service-oriented relationship, I think is extremely healthy for the software industry. Yeah, I think the cloud certainly changes workflows and value chains across the board of all companies. I mean, the notion of supply chain will probably be in every aspect of a customer's life cycle, not just supplies, but how they interact. We're seeing that across the cloud, other groups. But in addition to the supply chain role, you are also the Chief Sustainable Officer. Yes, I am, yes. Explain that role and some of the things you're working on, some stuff that's notable, things that you'd like to share with folks. Well, thank you for asking. It's kind of a personal passion. Well, you know, sustainability I think is really important to every person, but also every business. And really, if you look at Oracle, we're a big company. We've got about 130,000 people. We actually operate about 25 million square feet of real estate. A lot of energy consumed in our data centers. All of that gives us an opportunity to really drive forward-looking programs about driving down our energy consumption, being efficient about water usage, being efficient about waste. And you know, that is actually just good business. We do that, we can really drive down some of our costs. It's not philanthropy. Mark Hurd would say that drives cost of good sold down. That's correct. That's a competitive advantage. Absolutely. Can you share some color into that? Because obviously, you're on your own bills. We know that at Redwood Shores. But you talk about data centers. Now you have mobile devices. So now there's a lot more Oracle touchpoints everywhere. Absolutely. How is it a competitive advantage? With the cloud, for example, the data center that a customer is operating is our data center. And customers are going to be very motivated to understand how efficient that data center is. Because to some degree, it's part of their brand too. And so we're obviously looking at highly efficient, our data centers on average are about 50% more effective, efficient energy-wise than the average. We're constantly looking at ways to drive that down, adding more renewables into the mix. And so there's an example of a very good relationship between what's good for Oracle is also good for our customers and also lines up their mission with our mission. If you had to demystify the whole Chief Sustainable Officer role, its mission, and some of the strategy and tactics that you're executing against within Oracle and outside Oracle, how would you demystify that? Because people don't really kind of understand like, oh, that sounds so sexy. Is that like a nonprofit? Is that philanthropy? I mean, you know what I'm saying, but there's a deeper... Well, I'm an evangelist within inside Oracle. I want to bring attention to the good things we're doing. We're doing fabulous things across the board. This event, for example, is one of the most sustainable events in the industry. And people actually tour this event to learn from Oracle. So I want to bring that message out there. I also want to communicate to our employees. The employees like to know what kind of company they're working for. And we have a great track record. I want to communicate that, make it an attractive place for Oracle to work, for people to work, because we obviously, we're in a talent battle like everybody else, and that's part of it. And in general, just to make sure that Oracle is a good corporate citizen, that we maintain that perspective. What's been the most exciting thing that you've learned that's been magnified over your career and the sustainability piece of it? What learnings can you share that's been magnified for you? Just energy. One of the interesting facts about a piece of equipment, high-end server, is it actually costs more to run than it costs to buy. So when you factor in the energy and the- Just from the power. Power consumption and the air conditioning associated with that. And so you can actually cost justify changing hardware based on energy savings. I mean, another factor is too, but it's an important component of that. So really, our goal is to drive down that ratio of running costs to purchasing costs. That benefits our business, and it benefits the customer. So I'll ask you the same question in context to your business, supply chain, cloud and non-prem. What's the big learning that's been magnified on this awesome accomplishment achievement as Larry Ellison said over the past three years or so, what's the big thing that's come out for you looking down now at the stage of success? Well, I'll answer that in two ways. First way is I think it is really a testament to Oracle that we were willing to make this long-term strategic investment in essentially reinventing our applications. And that really is a testament to Larry and his commitment to make that kind of strategic investment. And the other really is that there are new ways to develop software that can really help to deliver innovative new solutions. And if you're open to those ideas, you can really deliver something special. What are you most excited about for SCM right now? What's the most exciting thing happening for you? You want me to say which of my kids I love the most? Yes, it's our favorite question. I think we've done some really interesting things in the user experience. If you look at some of the applications, for example, the planning application, it's fabulous UI. If you look at some of the manufacturing stuff, really innovative visual, used to visuals. And I think that's really been a very positive. And I think that really does help make applications more consumable and allow people to get more out of the applications they own. And are you guys starting to shift kind of your development and delivery to be kind of more in step with kind of a cloud-based system where you can do stuff more frequently? It's not kind of this every so often we're on. Well, we're delivering a release every six months, more or less, and that really is at an enormous pace. But the most important thing is if you're on the cloud, you can take the release. In the past, we may deliver the release, but folks, you know, we choose when they're up. Yeah, operationalize it, upgrade it. And we have challenges around that. Security patches, all kinds of whole things. Exactly, risks. So now, you know, we take on that burden. We can deliver the upgrade. We make sure we don't break what's there. And you can take advantage of the new functionality. And I think that's a tremendous adult. How about some metrics? Any numbers on customer adoption? Can you share any data? Well, we've got hundreds of procurement customers already, hundreds of inventory customers, probably 100 or so on our PLM and product, mass-to-data management solutions. The adoption, obviously, of order management and manufacturing is, you know, needs to take off. We're just releasing that now, but we're very excited. Great shout out from Larry Ellison on stage. Again, you know, for the folks, you know, BEMMA Software Guy, it's very difficult to do what you've done, to move it 100% on cloud for 80% of the broad market. It's a big achievement. Congratulations. I appreciate that very much. And I pass thanks on to my team, for sure. I'll give you the final word. Where can people find information about the products, SCM and all these good stuff there? Well, Open World's a great place to do that. No question. We're demonstrating all of our new stuff, including our upcoming release in the Democrats. So please go down there. Also, we're running another event, which I would love people to attend, which is in San Jose, 25th to the 27th of January. We call it the Modern Supply Chain Experience, previously known as the Valley Chain Summit. And that really is a focused supply chain event. Six different... How big is that event going to be? About 2,000, 3,000 people. It's a decent size event with San Jose Convention Center. And if you're a supply chain guy and you want to meet with your peers, really go deep, that's the place to be. Well, we'll have to put that on our CUBE watch list. Welcome. I'd love to do this again there. We can give you an update. Great stuff. The Modern Supply Chain is really about value chains and shifting to the cloud. And again, huge accomplishment. Congratulations. Thank you very much. We really appreciate your time. We are live here in San Francisco for the CUBE. The CUBE is powered by SiliconANGLE Media, which is SiliconANGLE.com, Wikibon Research and SiliconANGLE.tv. 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