 From Washington, DC, it's theCUBE, covering Oracle Cloud World. Brought to you by Oracle. Now your hosts, John Furrier and Dave Vellante. The signal from the noise. Our next guest is Swami Kupaswamy, Director of System Integration Data Science and Enterprise Data Manager at Avaya. Welcome to theCUBE. Good morning. So a big day here with the cloud. You guys are a showcase customer of Oracle. Just move to the cloud. Oracle Cloud at customer is a program they're doing. It's all about end-to-end, on-premise in the cloud, all the workloads, same code base. This is the strategy of Oracle. So tell us, what is your journey with Oracle? What are you guys doing with Oracle specifically and why the big announcement with them today? So especially Avaya has a long relationship with Oracle. We started with our on-prem applications like having the database, some of our on-prem enterprise applications. So with the cloud strategy, already we are on the journey towards the cloud with Oracle. The first stepstone we had was the marketing cloud, which is ELEQUA. And the next key project which is ongoing now is moving the CEP, the PRM portion, Oracle Sales Cloud, along with the past technology like integrated cloud services, Java cloud services to enable the integration between the cloud and on-prem without any like issues. Like you know, you can have it at the real time and make sure our systems, whether it is in the cloud or in the on-prem, it's slightly integrated. So on-prem today, and you're moving to the cloud, 100% cloud or a balance? Can you explain, is that both you care or what's the path? If you talk about the PRM portion, yes, we had 100% on the cloud. But in some still we have some other years with the on-prem, definitely we will have the roadmap move towards the cloud. And what's the reason, what's the business reason for that? Just simplicity, efficiency, cost, people, what's the driver? So it's not only in Hawaii, right? I thought we entered more of the clear up time because of so many applications like, more of the clear up time, the applications got evolved, you might have a lot of customization. The main biggest problem we have is that we want to identify address and identify addresses to reduce those customization. Basically, with the PRM solution, we are going with our skills now, we are reducing over 80% of our customization. And definitely we want to move to the CAPEX model from the OPEX to say some more professional experts. So being more agile for you guys with the acquisitions and your business process, is that the goal? Yes. And we want to eliminate all the customization we have, we carried on from the past. And how we can reduce the life cycle of any of our business processes to turn around the business passion and quicker in the real-time fashion. What's the impact for you guys, quantified? What's the like the ballpark order of magnitude? Months, days, weeks, efficiency, costs, can you like share any anecdotal data around the impact? So basically we are trying to like, for example, in the PRM process, we might have like a couple of weeks turn around from the CPQ, configure code and pricing, and then make it to an order. So we are trying significantly reduce the days, number of days, so that we can make a quicker turn around during the like quarter closes and like especially on the, making the deals to their business. So Swami, we've seen this whole cloud trend evolve over the last 10 years. You know, started with Amazon, with infrastructure as a service. And then from, you know, from the bottom and then from the top SaaS coming in. So you've got a lot of different clouds. I want to know from a customer's perspective, how has that evolved in your mind in terms of how you've implemented cloud and what's your expectation now as we are starting to see operational models both on-prem and in the cloud come together. So where are you guys at? What's your expectation? So basically if we talk about cloud, right? So as an enterprise, you might have different landscape. For example, some of the legacy applications which may be carried over from mainframe, some of them might be custom built, some of them might be vendor-based adapted applications. So to move to the cloud, first of all, you need to have a single operating environment converging all your different landscape, various landscapes to one platform or one suite so that it will be easy to flip it to the cloud. I think that's what Oracle is coming up with like on-prem. So it's easy. If you go to the SOE single operating environment, it's easy and measure yourself. You can make sure you are not going to miss anything when you move to the cloud. So basically the functionality or the benefit, you won't miss it actually. So move to the single operating environment, on-prem, test it, validate it, core on it, and flip it to the cloud. Okay, so the value of that is obviously it's going to simplify your operations. You're going to go with, so how do you approach that with, Oracle's coming today with the same, same message. Great, that's great for the Oracle pieces. So what do you do? You sort of isolate those mission critical apps and Oracle apps and sort of struggle to everything else, or do you extend that Oracle footprint? What's your strategy with regard to driving that same, same across your entire operations? I would say both. For example, some of the applications which I talked about like Sales Cloud, which we have in the legacy SaaS application, which we are migrating towards Oracle Sales Cloud, which we can use it, and some of the custom build applications which we built over the period of time, which we are migrating to the Oracle-provided applications. For example, Excel-based planning. We want to move to the PBCS, which is in the cloud, or whatever the different integration systems we had, the tool sets. We can consolidate them into the SOA-CS or JCS with ICS so that we can consolidate them. So it's going to be vice versa. Some of them can be within different vendors staying on-prem, but what are the things we can consolidate to the single operating environment maybe with this Oracle, we can move towards so that we can put it in the cloud? So we talk a lot about the evolution of hybrid cloud. We look at different operating models, started very rudimentary, and now it's starting to evolve where it actually, you have the same operating model and you've got tool sets for application development. And that's one of the things that Curian talked about today was the ability to customize the SaaS through Java or whatever languages you want. Can you talk about what Avaya's strategy is with regard to extending customizations with the SaaS? I want to, again, want to quote the same example, Oracle Sales Cloud, which we are doing now. Definitely some of the customization we cannot avoid based on your business process need, business need. So as we are talking now, we are using some of the customization with the ICS and Sova CS, which is a hybrid approach. We are doing in Avaya, which is the first time we are doing with the cloud services, actually. As well as we are using the Groove Escape, which is readily available with the Sales Cloud to do some more customization which we can enforce both on-prem and the cloud. How do you see, Swami, how do you see you guys using the Oracle Cloud Machine? Obviously the Java Cloud, as you guys just pointed out to Dave, that's your integration player for the SaaS and cloud with legacy on-prem. But now Oracle Cloud Machine specifically, as you guys go in the future, how do you guys anticipate using that product and how are you going to be growing into it? First, let me answer your question on the Java Cloud services. Currently, we are using the Java Cloud services for our PRM integrations to build our one of our partner portal. And especially with the ICS, we are integrating that with Sova CS to do our process orchestration and custom error handling, which we need from the business perspective to address our processes and needs. Is that going good for you guys? Yes, it's working well, and we are working with Oracle very closely on that, actually, so. So you're happy with Java Cloud? Yes, yes. Swami, is it an aspirin? Is it like a vitamin? Is it more of a, because it solves a lot of problems, right? You're integrating in. But definitely if you see something like which is readily available, for example, I don't need to take care about my version, my patching and my infrastructure or servers, it's readily available, I can start the coding right away. So it will reduce my development life cycle. So it's good for you? Yes. Okay, Oracle Cloud Machine, what's going on with that? How do you guys use that today? How has that grown to the future? Definitely, Oracle Cloud Machine is going to be a pioneer in the cloud landscape when the entire industry is moving towards the cloud. With the Oracle Cloud Machine, definitely it's like a visionary to see the cloud on-prem so that some of the, like Kurian mentioned in his talk, because of some legislative needs, compliance needs, people cannot go to cloud, they can have it on-prem and which is maintained by Oracle. Not, and definitely you can save some operational expenses. Definitely, in Hawaii also we look forward, like when you talk about the operational expenses and saving and simplifying the business process, maybe the step stone when you do the single operating environment, maybe Cloud Machine is the first one to look for, make sure you don't miss anything when you move to cloud and the next step we will move to cloud. Do you sort of, you feel like the Oracle Cloud Machine essentially replicates the public cloud experience on-prem? I mean the pricing is close, you know it's a subscription commitment for the infrastructure and it's more elastic for the, for the, for the PaaS. But in your mind, from a customer perspective, is that what you're looking for? Or are you more dogmatic about the cloud? What, does this hit the mark, is it a little bit off, is it right on? You should be careful. One thing I want to quote from a Korean stock is like one dollar for one terabyte for the backup. Oh, that got your attention. So, that's the key thing, right? So, same thing, like when you talk about on-prem or the cloud, I don't see any difference and I don't want to see either. Like, that's what the Oracle is saying. You won't see any difference between our public cloud and your private cloud, which is in the Oracle Cloud Machine. And another main thing the business will benefit is like, it is maintained by, even though it is in on-prem, I don't need to talk about my capital expense, which is going to depreciate over the year. And I don't need to talk about my operational expenses, which I need to spend to maintain, patch, security, all those things, which is already taken care of by Oracle. And if, like Oracle said, like if it is whatever we have in the meter, subscription based in the cloud, if it's available in the on-prem, that will be a good choice. So assuming it's everything Oracle says it is, it hits the mark for you, is that what you're saying? Yes, absolutely. Swamy, I want to ask you the final question, kind of, everyone wants to know is, what is the benefit or, I'll rephrase it differently, how do you see the public and private cloud working together? Because that's really kind of the big deal here, right? You got stuff on-prem, legacy, you're moving to the cloud, how do they work together? Those two major components, that's what everyone's working on right now in their architecture. So the main challenge in the on-prem and the public cloud is the integration, which is nothing but the pass. If we have your tightly controlled, tightly coupled pass infrastructure, either using ICS or SOA CS from Oracle Suite, I think it's going to be a good win. So I don't see any difference between the private cloud and the public cloud. So you don't distinguish between the two, it's all one. Yes, I would say yes. All right, so final question, what's the vibe here at the show? What's it like here for the folks that are watching that aren't here? Yes, so one of the big announcement Oracle made today on the Oracle Cloud mission, definitely I'm thinking it's going to be a game changer in the cloud industry. The who or the new comers want to use the cloud, I think it's going to be a stepstone for sure. Okay, so I want to thank so much, Avaya, a big customer of Oracle's, breaking it down here on theCUBE. This is theCUBE, our flagship program, John Furrier with Dave Vellante, more live coverage after this short break. Thank you.