 From Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Oracle Modern Customer Experience 2017. Brought to you by Oracle. Okay, welcome back everyone. We're live in Las Vegas. This is theCUBE, Silicon Angles flagship program. We go out to the events, they extract the signal from the noise. Been here two full days of wall-to-wall coverage. I'm John Furrier with my co-host, Peter Burris. Peter, really good to see Oracle really move from modern marketing experience, the old show name to a cleaner, broader canvas called Modern CX, which is Modern Customer Experience. And you're starting to see the new management, which took the baton from the old management, Kevin Akeroy, Andrew Ward, who did a lot of work. I mean, they basically did a ton of acquisitions. We talked last year, if you remember. Look, they have a data opportunity and we spilled it right out there and said if they can leverage that data horizontally and then offer that vertical specialism with differentiation, they could have their cake and eat it too, meaning the pillars of solutions in a digital fabric with data. That's what they did, they essentially did it. Yeah, they did. And it's been, it was a, we came here hoping that that's what we would see and that's what we saw, John. And Oracle not only has access to a lot of data, but a lot of that first person data that really differentiates the business. Information about your finances, information about your customers, information about orders. That's really, really crucial data and it's not easy to get. And if you could build a strategy for your customers, it says let's find ways of bringing in new sources of data, leveraging that data so that we can actually help you solve and serve your customers better. You got a powerful story, that's a great starting point. And one of the things that I would observe here is that this event, the top story was Mark Hurd came down and talked to the customers in the keynote and also made a cameo visit to the CMO some of which they had separately. But really kind of basically putting it transparently out there, look at this technology. Why are we spending all this technology and effort to get a 1% conversion rate on something that happens over here? Let's look at it differently. And I think the big story here is that Oracle puts the arc to the future, which I think is a very relevant trajectory, certainly directionally correct using data and then figuring out your process and implementing it. But really looking at it from a people perspective and saying, if you can use the data, focus your energies on that data to get new things going and not rely on the old so much, make it better, but bring in the new. And I think that's the one thing that we need to see more from Oracle, in all honesty, at this show and shows like this, is that, and we asked the question of a couple of guests, what exactly is modern marketing? Technology can allow a company to do the wrong things faster and cheaper. And in some cases that's bad, in marketing it's awful because more of the wrong thing amplifies the problem. That's how you take down a brand. You can really annoy the hell out of your customers pretty quickly. I think you made that point, interesting that I thought on that, just to reiterate that and validate that and amplify, is that if you focus more on serving the business as a marketer versus now it's about the customer, okay, which is why I like the CX and I know you do too, you can create enterprise value through that new way versus hey, look what team I'm helping you out with some leads and whatever, support, content. Marketing now owns the customer relationship. Well marketers talk about a persona all the time, John. They say, what's the persona? It's the stylized type of customer and now with data, we can make it increasingly specific, which is very, very powerful. I think Oracle needs to do the same thing with the marketing function. What is that marketing function persona? That Oracle is itself driving to, driving its customers to, and trying to lead the industry into. So I would personally like to see a little bit more about what will be the role of marketing in the future? What exactly is the modern, what exactly is modern marketing? What is the roadmap that Oracle has not just for delivering the technology, but for that customer transformation that they talk about so much. It's clear that they have an idea. I'd like to see a little bit more public because I think a lot of marketers need to know where they're going to end up. I was a bit skeptical coming in here today. I was a little nervous and skeptical. I liked the team and the other people here. But I wasn't sure they're going to be able to pull this off as well as they did. I'd give them a solid letter grade of an A on this event. Not an A plus because I think there's some critical analysis that's worth addressing in my opinion. I think in my opinion Oracle's missing some things. It's not to their fault. I mean, they're only going as fast as they can. Not to get your perspective too, but here's my take. They don't know how to deal with video. That came up as a technical issue. But J-Bear. But nobody really does. But nobody really does and that's just again because we're in the video because I jumped out at me. But J-Bear was on, who's hosted the CMO Summit. And he's out there too, like us. Content is a big thing. And I haven't heard a lot about the content equation in the marketing mix. So if you look at the modern marketing mix, content is data. Well, yes. Content is instrumental as a payload for email marketing. And we're in the content business. So we know a lot about the engagement side of it. So I just don't see a lot of the engagement conversations that are happening around content. I just don't see that dots connecting. And I think you're right. I think you're right, John. And part of the reason is that again, I think Oracle needs to do a better job of articulating what this means. From our perspective, and it's my perspective, but you agree, I'll put words in the mouth, is that marketing has to be a source of value to customers. Well, what do customers find valuable? They find information in easily digestible, consumable chunks as they go on their journey. What are those chunks? Those chunks, in fact, are content. So to tie this back and show how crucial this is, at the end of the day, consumers, businesses, need to learn about your brand, need to learn about Nesbest Action, all that other stuff in consumable, interesting, valuable chunks. And it ultimately ends up looking like content. So you're absolutely right. To talk about how this all comes together and show how the content is the mechanism by which a lot of this value is actually going to be delivered is really crucial. Now to give the praise sandwich, as we say, and positive coaching alliance, two positives, and then the critical analysis in the middle, that's the praise sandwich. So to give them some praise around the criticism, I will say that Oracle validates for me, and this is why I think they got a good strategy, that there's no silver bullet in marketing. Okay, there's no silver bullet. This product will get you more engagement. This will do that. They do show that data is going to be an intruable part of creating a series of collections of silver bullets, of bullets, if you will, to create that value. And I think that's the key. And then the second praise is that this is kind of nuance in their announcements, but the third party data support is a big deal in my mind. I want to expand more on that. I want to learn more about it because when you have the first party data, which is very valuable, and access to more data sources, that becomes increasingly interesting. So the extensibility for getting content data or other data can come in through third party. I think that opens the door for Oracle to innovate on the area we gave them criticism on. So I think that's a positive trend. I think that's a good outlook on having the ability to get that third party data. Yeah, but it's also going to be one of the places where Oracle's going to have to compete very, very aggressively with some other leaders who are a little bit more oriented towards content. At least some of their marketing costs are a little bit more content-oriented. I'm comfortable with Oracle, we'll get there, because let's face it, at the end of the day, marketing's always done a pretty good job of creative, using data to figure out what creative to use or create is nice, very important, but what we're really talking about is customer experience, where the customer gets something out of every interaction, and while content's crucial to that, the end result is ultimately, is the customer successful, and Oracle's showing a better play for that. So I'll give you, I think I like the way you did it on the grading. I'll give them a B plus, but I'm not disagreeing with you, I think we saw eight talent here, we saw an A minus story, and they're a year in. So there's still some work that needs to be done, but there's clearly, I'll give you a way to add a B plus. I'll give them an A on a vector, and where they're going, and the feedback that we've gotten from the customers walking the show floor, there's a lot of excitement, a lot of positive energy. The other thing that I would say, the band was, I'd give the band not a, I mean, band was a B minus. That's going to kill the curve. What was the band last night? I don't even remember, we missed the good one, I know that Don and I, we had dinner, so we came late, cause it was a good band, it wasn't like, it wasn't like Maroon 5, or One Republic, or Imagine Dragons, or U2, you know. Or one of the big ones, Sting, C minus. But the other thing that I think is really important is, at least it pertains to modern customer experience, is that they are, they are absolutely committed to the role that data's going to play. And we talked about that right at the front. But they are demonstrating a deep knowledge of how data and data integration and data flows are really going to impact the way their customers' businesses operate. And I think that there were a couple of, a couple of, I'll give a really high point, and one that I want to hear more about in terms of the interviews that we had, great high point was when we talked a lot about data science and how data science technologies are being productized. And that we heard, for example, that Oracle's commitment to its marketplace is that they are going to ensure that their customers can serve their customers' customers with any request within 130 milliseconds, anywhere in the world. That's a very, very powerful statement that you can only really make if you're talking about having an end-to-end role over, or infrastructure. Well, we commented, that's a good point. We commented that this end-to-end architecture is going to be fundamental. If you read the tea leaves and look at other things happening like at Mobile World Congress, Intel, I think is a bellwether on this with 5G, because they have to essentially create this overlay for connectivity as well as network transformation to do autonomous vehicles, to do smart cities, to do, to do smart home, all these new technologies going on. It's an end-to-end IP architecture. It's connected devices. They're super smart to have this connected data theme, which I think is relevant. But the other one, Ron Coperser has talked about this evolution. And I find some things, I want to get your reaction to this statement. So Ron was kind of like, oh, it's an evolution. We've seen this movie before, okay, great. But when you talk to Marta Federici, who was a customer from Royal Philips, she's head of CRM, now she's doing some of the stuff. So okay, what does CRM mean? If you think evolution, what the customers are doing, Time Warner and Royal, it's interesting. Certain things are becoming critical infrastructure and other things are becoming more dynamic and fluid. So if you believe in evolution, these are layers of innovation. So stuff can be hardened as critical infrastructure, say like email marketing. So I think that what's happening here is you start to see some hardening of some critical infrastructure, AKA marketing technology, MarTechStack, maybe some consolidation, AdTech kind of comes together. Certain things are going to be hardened and platformized. Well, let's take the word hardened and change it, because I know what you mean. It's, let's say it's codified. Now why is that little distinction a little bit interesting? It's because the more codified it gets, the more you can put software on it, the more you can put software on it, the more you can automate it. And now we're introducing this whole notion of the adaptive intelligence. Whereas we start to see marketing practices and processes become increasingly codified. What works, what doesn't work? What should we do more of? What should we do less of? Where should we be spending our time in innovating versus where should we just be doing it because it's a road activity at this point in time? That's where introducing this adaptive intelligence technology becomes really interesting because we can have the adaptive technology elements handle that deeply codified stuff where there really is not a lot of room for invention and give the more interesting, ongoing customer engagement, customer experience. Right on, I think we should challenge Oracle post-event and keep an eye on them on this adaptive intelligence app concept because that is something that they should ride to the sunset because that is just a beautiful positioning and if they can deliver the goods on that, they say they have it, we'll expand on that. That's going to give them the ability to do churn out a ton of apps and leverage the data. But to the codified point you're making, here's my take. One of the things that I hear from customers in marketing all the time is a lot of stuff is, oh yeah, mobile first, but still stuff's web presence-based. So you got all these coded URLs, you got campaigns running 10 ways from Sunday, DNS is not built to be adaptive and flexible, so it's okay to codify some of those systems and say, look, we just don't tinker with these anymore. They're locked and loaded, you build on top of it, codify it, and make that data the enabling technology. Without it becoming a new inflexible. Yeah, I can't say, hey, let's just tweak the hardened infrastructure to run an AB test on a campaign or do something. No, no, you set the codified systems, you harden them, you put software on top of them, and you make it a subsystem that's hardened, and that's kind of what I mean. That's where the market will go because, let's face it, I mean, the systems aren't that intelligent to handle other marketing. There's still computers. There's still computers, people are running around just trying to fix some of this spaghetti code in marketing, and as the marketing department gets more IT power, hey, you own it, they're owning it now, so don't be afraid what you wish for, you might get it, right? So now they own the problem. So I think Oracle on the services side has a huge opportunity to do what they do with Time Warner. Come into the market and say, hey, we got that for you, and that's what Herd's kind of subtle message was on his keynote. Hey, we're IT pros, but by the way, you don't need to be in the IT business to do this. We have fixed your problems and roll out this. We already talked to you in your language, in your language, it's a modern customer experience, which is one of the reasons why they've got to be more aggressive. And by the way, and we have all the data in our data cloud, and all the first part data in our Oracle databases, that system of record becomes the crown jewel. Oracle has a lock spec on the table. Do you think it's a lock spec? No, and that's exactly why I think they need to articulate where this is all going a little bit. They have to be a leader in defining what the future of marketing looks like, so they can make it easier for people to move forward. Putting you in the spot, what do you think a modern marketing looks like, an organization? We talked about this, and the answer that I gave and all of all of it slightly, because we had another great guest and I thought about it a little bit more, is a brand continuously and always delivers customer value, always. And one of the things- Kind of cliche-ish. Kind of cliche-ish. Dig into it. But modern marketing is focused on delivering customer value. How? If they deliver, well, for example, when the customer has a moment in a journey of uncertainty, your brand is first to the table with that content that gets them excited, gets them comfortable. On a progression. On a progression field ready to move forward. That you're, and this is, I was going to, while making another point in a second. And I would even say that we might even think about a new definition of the funnel at the risk of bringing up that old artifact. Historical funnel like to sail. Now we can actually start thinking about what's that funnel look like to customer success? Well, there's two funnel dynamics that are changing. This is important. I think this is going to be one of those moments where, wow, theCUBE actually unpacked a major trend, and I believe it to be true. The vertical funnel is collapsed, and now the success funnel is not done. It's not baked. Not baked, not decimated from this perspective of if the sale is the end game of the funnel, pop out, that's over. Your point is, it's kind of like venture funding for a startup, that's when the start line begins. So here, it's, okay, we got a sale, but now we have instrumentation to take it all the way through the life cycle. And you know, John, that's a great way of thinking about it. In many respects, when you introduce a customer to a new solution that has complex business implications, that you are jointly together making an investment in something, and you both have to see it through. I mean, sales guys put investment proposal on the... That's exactly right. And so I think increasingly, so I would say modern marketing comes down to customer success. And prediction I'll make for next year is that this session is called the modern marketing, modern customer experience show, but the theme is going to be customer success. Here's what I'm going to do, here's what I'm going to do this year, Peter. We're going to, we will, based upon this conversation of which we're riffing in real time as we analyze and summarize the event, we, I will make it my mission and you're going to work with me on this as a directive. We're going to interview people, we're going to pick people that are truly modern marketing executives. That's great. We're going to find a simple algorithm that says this is what we think a modern marketing executive looks like. And we're going to interview them, we're going to do a story on them, and we're going to start to unpack, because I think next year, we should be coming here saying, we actually did our work on this. We figured out, we figured out that a modern marketing organization and an executive behave and look this way. Right, I think it's a great idea. I'll give you one more thought because I know you like this one too. Doug Kennedy, the partner conversation. Very good. Target, you know, clearly a grade A executive. Seven weeks into the job, but that is going to be, for this whole thing to succeed, he's got a lot of work in front of him. It's going to be very interesting to see how over the course of time, this show and other Oracle shows evolve. Look, I have a lot of partner experience, you do too. He's got a zillion years under his belt. He's a pro. He did not have any deer in the headlights look for seven weeks in the job. He's been there. He's done that. He knows the industry. He's seen the cycles of change. He's ridden ways of innovation up and down. And I think Oracle has a huge opportunity with his new program. And that is, Oracle knows how to make money. Okay, Oracle knows how to price things. They know how to execute on the sales side and go to market. And partners relationships are grounded in trust and profitability. And I would say profitability first and trust second and then it's kind of a virtuous circle. But John, they got to start getting grounded in customer experience, right? Yeah, yeah. And that's not, it's doable, but it's going to be a challenge. Well, we talked about swim lanes with his interview and I thought that was interesting. If you look at Accenture, for instance, Deloitte, PWC and all the different players, they're picking their swim lanes with their core competencies. And that's what he was basically saying. They're going to look for core competency. Now, I think they're not there yet. These, the major SIs and potential partners. So he's going to have to put the spec out and put the bar there and say, this is what we got to do. But you got to make the channel serve the customer. It has to be profitable and it has to be relevant. And the only danger to strategy, I would say, is the co-selling thing is always dicey. Especially if one has customer experience as a primary. It requires equilibrium in the ecosystem. If it doesn't there. It's a multi-partner go to market. It's not just one or two now. So he's going to have to really spread the love at the same time, have us harden rules, stick to his knitting on that one. Okay, Peter, final word. What do you bottom line the show? Encapsulate the show into a bumper sticker. Well, we heard Amazon release today, Google release today, beat their numbers. Two companies that are trying to build an ecosystem from their core of the cloud. And the question is, is Oracle, who has customers with applications and with that first person data, are they going to be able to cloudify, sorry for using that word, but are they going to be able to gain that trust that this new operating model they're really committed to for the future before Amazon and Google can accrete applications to their platform. Because Oracle has the end to end advantage right now. And in the world where digital is important, speed is important, the fidelity of the data is important, the customer experience is important, that end to end has a window of opportunity. And I would also add two other companies reported, Microsoft and Intel and MIST. So you have Amazon and Google, New Guard, Newer Guard, Old Guard, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle is considered Old Guard, even though they have some modernization going on from CX in the cloud, but Oracle is cloud 100% in the cloud. Their SAP for instance is going multi-cloud. So the wild card in all this is if the multi-cloud game evolves. End to end, end to end, because that has advantages. When you're talking data, one of the things that Jack Berkowitz said, he said, you know why we can hit that 150 millisecond target? Because you don't have to move the data around. Sometimes we don't have to move the data. This is going to be very interesting and this is going to be fun to watch and participate. Of course theCUBE will cover Oracle Open World, we'll be there again this year. We don't have the exact specifics on that, but certainly if you're interested in checking us out we're silkandangle.com, Peter's research is at wikibond.com as well as silkandangle on the front page. Silkandangle.tv is all the videos and we will be documenting and following the modern marketing experience with people and companies and documenting that on theCUBE and in Silkandangle. So that's a wrap from day two at Oracle Modern CX. Thanks for watching.