 Chris is the Director of Enterprise Solutions for Partner, Sales, Partner, Programs, and Sales at Oracle. Yes. Welcome. Thank you. So, quite an event. It is quite an event. Amazing here. We've had a great day today. We've had over 100,000 views of the live stream. Awesome. Still got a lot of people watching. So you're our first Oracle guest in the queue at Oracle. This is our second year. We're trying to get Larry to come in. He's not getting back to us. Yeah, for no way. So, appreciate it. The question that I have is, obviously, we've been following Exadata since it's been around. And it's just been remarkable the success of Exadata. Obviously, now the analytics. We just had Bill Schmarz over from EMC, essentially saying Oracle, great move, analytics, double down. What's your take on why Exadata is so popular? You know, in general, I just think it's a game-changing technology. And I'm certainly not the technologist. I'm a salesperson. But I think coming from the partner side, it's just provided a new entry level for our partners on the both hardware and software side. So it's great innovation. So what exactly is your role at Oracle? Talk about that a little bit. So I work for a group called the Enterprise Solutions Group. And we're an enabling sales team for both the direct and indirect selling organization. We report up through Keith Block. And it's a great organization to help enable and build pipeline for Oracle and the sales team. So give me an example of some of the more interesting things that you're working on. What's hot in the market today? I can explain to you the role that I do and the reason that QLogic and I are partnering. We were partnering as we sponsor what's called X-Week Quarterly for the Enterprise Solutions Group. And we have the role of actually training our sales consulting groups on real life topics like Exadata, et cetera. And QLogic is actually one of our sponsors for that event. So they do presentations for us. They talk about how their technology works within our environments, et cetera. Okay, so do you have more of an infrastructure focus? Is that fair? Or is it across the board? My role in particular is more of an enabling, like on the training side. But we do have solution experts in our team that actually take a look at technologies and take a look at where the market's going and try to be ahead of where the, setting the stage for the sales team. So you think of QLogic, you think of storage, networking, fiber channel, IO, InfiniBand, switching, what do you see going on there? So from an infrastructure perspective to your point, there are a lot of changes going on. But I think the great thing about it is when you take the Exadata box and you take a look at our backup and recovery solutions, it's a great mix of pulling all of our technologies together. Now how long have you been at Oracle? Two years. So I came over with this stuff. She came with the Sun Acquisition. Okay, how are they treating you? They're treating me great. Love it, right? You know, on live TV, Chris. He know Larry Gage yesterday. It was. I mean, everyone's like, wow, that's on record systems. Yeah, it was great. John Fowler's up there doing his thing. John goes tomorrow, right? It's really exciting. Yeah, I wrote today in a blog that I thought the Sun Acquisition was amongst the top three that I could name in the history of the industry. I don't know, maybe I'm stretching on that. I don't have a comment on that one. But it's up there. No, I'm just pointing out that we're definitely high in the acquisition. I mean, it's sort of game changing in the enterprise. I agree with that. So what are the, just to get, because I know we don't want to go too deep into Oracle because you really don't have any comment, official comment on Oracle strategy. But in general, out in the marketplace, what are you seeing as the top trends? I mean, you're dealing with partners in the marketplace and the ecosystem. What are the top things that are on people's minds these days? Obviously the cloud's big. What are the big high level trends that you're seeing? I just think in general, when you talk to our typical reseller partner, they're going to market in a different way. You know, where they could typically move some hardware and make some money in margin and maintain that for a while and they could sell software and they could make some money there. I think what they're recognizing as Oracle is, is that based on engineering solutions, there's a more of an opportunity to bring solve business problems at the customer. And I think that's what the partners are recognizing as well. So let's drill into that a little bit. I mean, that sounds good, it makes sense, but a lot of the partners have made a lot of money off of doing that tricky integration. So when you come in with a solution that's engineered together, it's all pre-tested, pre-engineered. I mean, it somewhat takes up that value away from them. So in a way, they have to change, don't they? I mean, what are you seeing there? So I would have said, yes, a few years ago, they would probably have not recognized that as a value but a competitive feature. But I think today, based on the fact that they really are trying to go to a solutions-based consultative sale where they can recognize more revenue and deeper margins, I think that they're actually, they're on board. And I've talked to several partners while here and they're very excited about it. Did you see in that two-year period sort of a transformation of the existing strong partners or did you see a shift where you had new disruptive partners come in who embraced that model? Well, how would you characterize that transition of the last two years? It's been a big one, you know, I think on all sides for Oracle and the partner side. But on the software side, because those partners have been traditional and understand how Oracle works and have been around for a while. I think that they jumped on the bad wind probably a little bit earlier, but the hardware guys are right behind them right now. So I think that there's just a really great mix of both now at Oracle. How about culturally, you know, coming from Sun, kind of West Coast, you know, Wild West Coast. Compare the cultures of Sun and Oracle. How is it different? I don't know if I can really compare it. I came from storage tech originally. Oh really, okay. So it's a lot of the same. Are you based in Colorado? I am. Oh, you are, okay. I am. So I was used to the culture and I think in general it's blended very well and I think we're all learning from each other. Well, so storage tech to Sun must have been kind of a culture shock. That was very different. All right, and Sun to Oracle's got to be somewhat different. We're both West Coast companies. Yeah, but going through the transition a second time was a lot easier than the first time. How long were you at storage tech? I've been in total between storage tech, Sun and Oracle almost 12 years. 12 years, okay, yeah. Storage tech, I used to follow storage tech very closely. Yeah, it was a good company. I followed storage tech. I started following storage tech, John, about six months before it went into chapter 11. You probably, Chris, don't even remember that. That's how old I am. And then storage tech came out of chapter 11, a very famous story led by a guy named Royal Poppy, who, rest of soul, is quite a leader. And then storage tech was an icon of the industry for a long, long time. They called storage row still. Storage row through Colorado, through the main quarter of 36. Yeah, it was out there recently in the old, the storage tech facility looks like it's gone through quite a few changes. It's not there. It's just gone. Yeah. Well, that whole area has just grown up unbelievable. It has. The Longmont area used to be able to just drive back there on 36 and it was just fields. Empty. Not anymore. And it used to be able to go from Aurora to the Springs and it was nothing. And now it's just all built up. Colorado's a great place to live and people know it now. Yeah. Yeah, so do you have like incredible cardiovascular capabilities like everybody else I know in Colorado? No. And now you don't climb 14,000 foot mountains? No. No? A lot of people do, I do not. Boulder's booming right now. Boulder, tech scene is on fire. Love Boulder, yeah. So it's a good place to live. Well, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. We really appreciate it. Oracle Open World's been great to us. Again, second year in a row, we snuck in through Q-Logic. We would not be here. It wasn't for Q-Logic. So great that you partnered with those guys and they worked together with them. So I really appreciate it. Thank you very much guys. Have a great day. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you very much. See ya.