 Live from the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California, it's the queue at Oracle OpenWorld 2014. Brought to you by headline sponsor Q-Logic with support from HGST. violin memory and Mark logic. And now here are your hosts, John Furrier and Dave Vellante. Hey, welcome back everyone, we're here live. I think we're back live here at Oracle OpenWorld. I'm John Furrier, my co is Dave Vellante here inside the Q-Logic with Live at Oracle OpenWorld. This is where all the center of the action is in the applications enterprise world right now. So many people here, I can't even figure out what the number is this year. But big mojo here going on at Oracle OpenWorld this year. Dave and I have been here for five years and we've seen the lull, the calm before the storm. It's past four years, it's just been, has three years in particular, it's been movement to the cloud. We're excited to have Anne McClure, Distinguished Engineer with EMC. EMC's here at Oracle OpenWorld with us inside the Qube. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, great to be here, John. Thanks for having us again. EMC, honestly, targeting on stage by Larry Ellison again this year saying, hey, you know, we're faster and cheaper than Oracle. Cheaper, I always say, never use the word cheaper because that's cheap is cheap. Inexpensive is a better word, but he said cheap. Yeah, well, that's true. That is true. Well, I think, you know, as we talked about last year, you know, it really is all about options. So I think that not everybody runs 100% Oracle in their environment. So the ability to be able to do multiple enterprise applications and databases at the same time but deliver on that high performance in a flash everywhere strategy, it's the way to go. I mean, it is the future and as a lot of customers move to the cloud and move applications to the cloud, it's not just about moving Oracle to the cloud. You've got to be able to deliver on all fronts. So there's a lot of conversations around vertically integrated stacks, horizontally scalable. These are the kind of the trade-offs people are dealing with. So I want to get your take on that. How do you talk about, people talk about overlays, underlays, horizontally scalable, vertically integrated, like what is it? Is it one or the other? Can they all coexist? Obviously the horizontally scalable is what the cloud's all about. People get enamored by auto-scaling some of the things that Amazon's done and certain things happening OpenStack and VMware and other things, but vertically integrating also works as well. Talk about how you parse out between those two. Yeah, I think different customers are at different points in the cycle of adoption to cloud. So obviously when you go vertical, there's a lot of advantages when you can integrate software layers with hardware layers and deliver more simplicity and automation to the customer, which is what you want to do in a virtualized cloud environment. But you want to be able to go wide too on that. So Converged is great. I still think that the customer base that's out there today, some are still buying the individual storage arrays and others are buying the Converged platforms through Vblock. So how do you see that being, if you're a customer, how do you make sense of it? Do I pivot off of the virtualization piece as the infrastructure set the tone for that direction? I think a little bit of both. So I think some of the neat things that are going on in storage infrastructure today is all flash storage arrays. So that's just extremely exciting. And I think it's extremely simple. So you're three clicks to a line. You don't worry about all those data layouts and things like we did in the past. And I think the technology is kind of moving us forward quickly in that space and simplicity through automation in the cloud. So migrating your workloads to the cloud and then setting them up in two or three clicks on database as a service, that's really where the future's at. So that simplicity and that performance guarantee has to be there. So extremely simple. Extremely simple. I think, well, can we steal that tagline? Extreme exaggeration. Yeah, that's right. Stream I.O. Yeah, it's extremely simple. And it really is, you know, when I talk to customers. Jeremy Bird's going to steal that. Jeremy, I got to copy right on that right now. Yeah. Yeah. God, Doug, God, can we get... Royals use. Absolutely, absolutely. So, but I think that like you're spot on. It is extremely simple. And the way you think of hybrid storage, which is still out there and very strong, we just came out with our new VMAX 3 line. And in a single footprint, you're getting 860,000 IOPS in a single tile. 490 terabytes, I believe, is the condensis configuration for massive scale of data. So, you know, you're still there. The hybrid storage is still there, but all flash is extremely compelling because it's extremely simple. All flash with the action is, Dave and I are always joking that EMC is always trying to get taken out by somebody. And the people nibbling at your heels, you got pure storage. Certainly Oracle, you know, moving up the leg a little bit, but because they're big, but anyone can use a benchmark. And last night, Larry Ellison had a performance benchmark. It says less than half price per terabytes. So, I mean, do you guys look at that? I mean, benchmarks are being thrown around like it's nobody's business right now. You can make a benchmark, you know, stand up and dance if you wanted to. How do you talk to customers in the market about all these claims about, we're faster than EMC, we're 10 times more efficient? Yeah, I think honestly, I mean, I've been in this business a long time, similar to you. And I think it went a third party can validate your performance. That's really the way to go. You know, ESG last year validated the performance of a V block that had, you know, PCIe cards in the all flash, or I mean, PCIe cards in the UCSC 240M3s in the hybrid performance database. So when you can get parties to actually benchmark the performance, third party validation, that's really what customers I think look at. I got to say, so this is relatively, I mean, brand new announcement, the ink's still drying on it. Yep, sure, Dave. Somebody said to me, one of my colleagues said to me, well, actually what's happening is Oracle's using DMC list prices and they're discounted prices. So we have to unpack that. We don't know yet. Right, sure. The product's not shipping, so, you know, stay tuned, is what I would say. And I wonder if we could talk go back a little bit and talk about sort of the database and where we're at. Sure. Larry Ellison said last night that the very first Oracle database was Oracle version two, because they didn't have a version one because nobody would have bought version one. So it was version two. And he said it was developed on a digital equipment mini computer. Yeah, I used to work there. I know you did. And then, of course, there was IBM mainframes and he said then when we had to go to client server, customers came to us and said, hey, we want to move our apps to client server. And Oracle said, well, rewrite them. And they said, no, no, you don't make that easier for us. So Oracle, to Oracle's credit, Oracle does put effort into R&D, but oftentimes it starts with a letter, like eight I, internet, you know, or 11 G for grid, which now has become 12 C for cloud. So what I'm trying to get to is, where are we in the database world? Help us squint through what's going on. We had database wars of the early 80s. Manifest themselves into really Oracle leadership. Clearly Microsoft came out. IBM has kept its stronghold. And then a few others, but it was unclear back in early 80s who was going to win. And Oracle, you know, clearly did a good job there. And then as John says, it got boring for a while. And then all of a sudden, all these NoSQL guys exploded. Right, sure. Which Oracle says, we have, you know, key value stores as well. Yep. When IBM bought notes, Larry Ellison said, that's all going to be done in Oracle, all that unstructured stuff. And they do a lot of unstructured. So how should we think about the state of database today beyond the letter? How much of that, in your view, from a practitioner's perspective, is real versus marketing? And where is it all headed? Sure, sure. I think your biggest influencer is big data. So the unstructured databases that are out there for Hadoop, NoSQL, MongoDB, these are open source databases that are driving third platform applications. And you have your traditional applications that are still Oracle, SQL Server, DB2 for second platform. And that's what's really driving it. But the massive growth is in big data databases. And those are pretty much open source based. So you've got to be able to deal with both worlds. So second platform and third platform. So as somebody who understands database and been around in the business and understands technically what's going on, how many of the emerging applications that you see today need sort of the traditional asset properties that we've been used to in the last 20, 30 years? And going forward, how do you see that affecting Oracle? I think it's going to be a blend, right? So, you know, everybody said, oh, one day the mainframe will go away. The mainframe's still here. And there's still, you know, great applications that run on the mainframe. Just consider for it. But it became a lot less relevant, though. Absolutely. So I think that that's what's going on kind of in second platform. It's being done at a different growth than, and then you've got your third platform that's just exploding. So I think you'll see things to begin to plateau off, but it's a mix. I mean, when you do federated searching and federated query, you're doing all of this across big data analytics across second platform and third platform databases. All right, so I want to come back on that point because I love to have in this conversation with folks that used to be part of, you know, first or even first and second platform companies. Everybody expects Joe Tucci loves to use the waves. And new winners emerge from the new wave. And a lot of times traditional companies or existing companies don't make it the next wave. But many do, increasingly many do. Okay, Sun didn't make it. It made it now as part of Oracle. Digital didn't make it. It may make it, you know, part of, I guess, as HP now. But so it seems like an Oracle made it first platform, made it through second platform, seems to be positioning for third platform. What's different about Oracle? What's unique about Oracle in that they're able to make those transitions or are there blind spots that they're not seeing in your view? Well, I think they have to make the transition. So I think any good second platform, DBMS, whether it's Oracle or SQL Server or DB2, you've got to make that transition point. The key is in the sharing of the data. So when you do big data analytics, you're going to take unstructured data that might be sitting in a Hadoop, and you're going to absolutely blend it and pull it from Oracle. And you're going to mix that on an analytical query out to your business that's driving marketing. So they've got to make that transition where some of the applications are going to be open source applications that are written to big data unstructured DBMSs, and then you're going to still have some of your traditional ones on second platform. And I think Larry's message on bringing his applications to the cloud is great, because that's the first step in kind of making sure that that data can kind of be shared out into the cloud and et cetera. So let me sharpen my question. Because a lot of databases make it, Informix made it, Greenflum made it, Vertica made it, and it didn't make it as an independent company. So it wasn't able to sustain digital, still alive kind of. Yeah, turner, turner. There's pieces in there. Little pieces in there. Fat example, but they are unable to sustain as an independent entity. What is your take on a lot of the NoSQL activity that's going on right now? It would appear that the market's not going to be able to sustain the 800 NoSQL databases that are out there. What do you see happening? I've been in this business a long time with so of you. So I think over time, things vet out. And I think EMC was the leader in cloud, and we were the leader in big data, with some of the acquisitions we did with Greenflum and Pivotal Labs and what we're doing in the big data world. So I think some of that stuff kind of vets itself out over time. So what's the prediction of what it's going to be in three or four years? I could tell you what that prediction is. But I do believe that options for customers at their various paths on that adoption rate to cloud is really the right answer for customers. So and what's your role inside of EMC? I mean, EMC has Greenflum as a database, but you don't think of EMC as a database company. You think of EMC as a data company, a storage company that obviously sells into database environments. So what's your role? How do you facilitate value inside of EMC and then ultimately for customers? Yeah, my role at EMC is I'm very much focused on the enterprise application in the database, the middleware layers, that type of thing and how they integrate with technology. But the key is EMC is really about the federation of companies, right? So you have VMware, you have EMC-II, you have VCE, you have RSA, and you have Pivotal. So the orchestration of the technologies together for the correct solution for the customer, that's what we're really about and offering that customer the option. I mean, VMware can run on anything. Doesn't have to run on EMC hardware. So Pivotal can run on anything, right? So you're trying to drive the correct technology out and into the world. And Joe is just, Joe Tucci's phenomenal at doing that. So it's a great place to be and I love that integration point in figuring out what's the next big thing for customers. And if I could tell you all of it, then gosh, that would be a secret. Let's talk about the data. Let's speak out on some database stuff here. So Larry Ellison talked about, oh, 30 years ago, you know, like an old speech, I was in the business Oracle, showed the evolution, and he's positioning it as a modernization. So databases don't really change that much over the years and still do the same thing, they store the data. But you're seeing a new flavor, as you mentioned, the MongoDB, they have scaling issues, some say, but then, you know, software can handle it in clusters. So you're seeing all these kind of like new age problems that become opportunities. So the question I have for you is, what is happening in your mind with cloud that's most compelling around the database? Is it the fact that compute's going down in cost? Is it the fact that you can move data, compute to the data, vice versa? And if any of that, is it changing the database? Business. Yeah, so here's, here, I love that question, because the answer to that is that a DBA of today is having to manage hundreds to thousands of databases, and they never hired any more FTEs for DBAs, right? So when system administrators, when virtualization hit the system admin layer of the stack, then they were managing much more than four or five single physical instances of servers, they managed hundreds. So for the same amount of cost of your DBA, you're going to be managing hundreds of databases. So what does the cloud bring? The cloud brings as a service. So you can actually stand up using vCenter. We've done it internally in our own organization under IT proven, and you can set up databases of service for multiple different databases, Oracle, SQL Server, MongoDB, and you can offer that out as a service. So as a DBA, you're just going to log in three clicks, you got your database, and you're ready to go, and you can now manage hundreds of databases versus three or four. And that's a huge change in IT today. So basically, just to recap that, just dumb it down for me, cloud brings, quote, as a service, great line, right? So let's just hold that in there as fact. So now the word stand up means something new, like that's the term we use, oh, stand up some servers, stand up this, stand up that, basically stand up, get something up and running, right? Absolutely. If that's the case, things will be standing up more and more faster. So that means a proliferation of stuff, diverse stuff, from sysadmin to applications. So that's going to change the role of DBA, from being managing databases, fields, to basically managing infrastructure, and apps. That's not DBA, that sounds like an IT pro. Yeah, but think of it this way, it's like technology is like extreme IO that just completely revolutionized the way storage is done, right? The simplicity that extreme IO brings to the table, you don't have to now care about the workload. Was it OLTP, was it DW, was it hybrid, was it mixed? You're going to get a performance guarantee at half a millisecond of latency for whatever linear scale you want. You begin to not care that the database was MPP or not MPP, right? So all of that can be applied like across the heterogeneous database. So the simplicity of it enables, and the technology really enables it to manage more and more and more. So to connect the dots, Dave, so this is what we always talk about DevOps, right? DevOps has created this idea of horizontally scale full resource. So that means when you need it, you just get it. You push a button, they're elastically scaling. Except the network. That's coming. Yeah, but what you say is extreme IO is that stuff's happening at scale, and it's happening. It's just happening. And you program the policies based on what you need. Sure, and you know, in the old days, and they're not very old, right? So in the old days you had to like figure out, I remember when we did for customers data layouts where you said these are the DVF files that you want to be running on SATA drives. This is the DVF that you want to be running on flash drives. And fast VP basically virtualized all that and did it for you. And so now with extreme IO being all flash and managing it just as a single easy, then that's the way the technology's driving it. So you're seeing this in every inflection point. Every inflection point has an error of clutter, abstracting away a lot of the steps. The automation, whatever you want to call it. So that's what's happening now, Dave. I think that's what we're seeing, right? This idea, okay, a lot of diverse stuff's happening. We either tackle it manually and provision it, stand it up, and wire it together, or software takes care of it. Right. Okay, so that being said, what next database comes out after that? Manage the databases of the databases. Is there a database of the database? It could be, could be, right? So it could be. I mean, I think that the world of tomorrow is a mixture of your traditional, like we started this conversation, your traditional second platform databases and your new and upcoming third platform databases. And, you know, there'll be some vetting on which are the leaders for a period of time. How long they will be leaders? You know who knows, right? Will it be two years, three years, or will there be other creative stuff coming out? So what's a third platform database look like? Does it look like a combination of second platform that's been sort of ported to third platform and sort of born in the third platform databases? Yeah, I think it's a combo, right? So we always talk about big data in the data lake. The data lake is made up of structured and unstructured data. So unstructured data is the stuff that you collect about the world, right? So things that were, you know, internet tracks or footprints that you left behind and data like that. And your structured data is the classic ERP systems, your classic old school data warehouses and stuff. And so it's really a blend. It's a blend of both. Okay, and objects are structured, I guess. Kinda, all right? Well, that's a whole different concept. I'm just throwing it in there because it's coming, right? And okay, and so I've got a mix. Yeah, you will have a mix. Sure. Sure. And 12C looks to you like a third platform database? You know, I think you'll, no. I think you'll always kind of- It's got mobility built in. It's got analytics built in. That's what I'm hearing anyway. Sure, for Oracle. But it just doesn't feel like a third platform database. Sure, you have to figure out your source of data though. And the one thing I think that is key and is to be able, the ability to pull from those multiple data sources, by a single business data analytic query, right? So when you do your analytics, you're going to pull from Oracle, but you're absolutely going to pull from other data sources. And that data lake is, is it a virtual lake? The data stays where it is, and I'm somehow able to virtualize that lake? You can kind of think of it that way, sure. Yeah, there's technologies in the middle that are allowing for the integration of data to kind of be sucked into the data lake. Like what, just you're talking about integration technology? Yeah, the pivotal, and I'm probably not the expert on how to go. So it's not ETL, not traditionally ETL, right? It's some other kind of. Because data is huge, and so you can't really, you don't want to yank it from its source completely. In some cases you do replicate the data into your big data lake, and other times you want to just reference it from its source of where it came from. And that might have been open systems or mainframe. But it's a, the data lake is a data store with a bunch of little ponds around that are somehow connected and integrated. It's a big lake. And technology is a big, it's what? It's a big lake. A big lake. No ponds. Yeah, no ponds. No ponds in the data lake? Yeah, no ponds in the data lake. It's a big lake. We don't like the data lake. It's a, yeah. Connected by rivers. And think of the business application, though. That's really where you got to put your brain, is it's the business app that's driving the federated analytical query that's giving you that differentiated answer for how you want to change your marketing, how you want to change your engineering, how you want to change all of that. And so it's that federated query. You've got to be able to do federated query, you've got to be able to do federated search. And federated query and federated search, the word federated, means multiple data sources. And then it could be even a partner's data lake, not pond, right? Could be a partner's data lake. Yeah, right, exactly. Do we have time to talk about security? No. I don't want to talk about data oceans. Hey, security's good, security's good. Data oceans, not data lakes. Well, you put it on our cloud and you get RSA. So you're totally secure, so come on over. And the cure. I'd stay with you if you talk about security. You're such a thing as totally secure. Hey, McClure, talking about data lakes, not my favorite topic, data oceans. That's a whole new story. Ah, data oceans, the blue ocean. No, that's it. The data ocean is made up of data lakes. There we go. Ocean feeds the lakes. Yeah, there you go. This is theCUBE, we're live here at Oracle Global. On the ground, on the floor, this is theCUBE. We're live in San Francisco. Oracle Global will be right back. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante. With EMC here at Oracle Global, we'll be right back.