Voice of the MVP - Oracle AI Database@Azure

0:00 SAI PENUMURU: Hey Biju, how are you?

0:01 BIJU PK: Doing good, great to be here, sir.

0:03 SAI PENUMURU: We are here in Microsoft MVP Summit in Seattle,

0:07 and this is my first time and very excited.

0:11 We are in Microsoft Studio,

0:13 and we thought of sharing this MVP journey, Most Valuable Professional journey,

0:19 especially for the Oracle community because we

0:22 are part of Oracle Database at Azure product.

0:28 Let me quickly introduce my guest here, Biju.

0:34 I am sure most of you know about Biju.

0:36 I do remember my Oracle 8i, 9i days, We used to read his books, OCP, OCA.

0:44 I think, still, you can find it on Amazon.com,

0:48 and very happy to be with Biju, and a lot of learnings.

0:53 This is what we call community.

0:56 Biju, do you want to introduce yourself?

0:58 BIJU PK: Sure, yes.

1:00 As Sai mentioned, I've been doing the Oracle world for more than 30 years now.

1:05 Right out of college, I started doing Oracle, Oracle 7.

1:09 I started with Oracle 7 development, Forms 3, so it continued.

1:15 I'm here right now doing mostly work with Oracle cloud infrastructure,

1:21 multicloud; pretty much Oracle on any cloud is my focus.

1:26 That's the main reason I'm here at the Microsoft Conference,

1:28 Oracle on any cloud, but I'm an Oracle ACE Director.

1:32 I became an Oracle ACE Director in 2015.

1:35 I've been part of the ACE Program for more than 19 years now.

1:38 I love the community.

1:40 I want to help the community.

1:42 Whatever I learn, I want to make it easy for the community

1:46 and make it easy for someone else to learn and share.

1:51 SAI PENUMURU: Yeah, and myself, so my name is Sai,

1:56 in short, and I'm calling— because everybody's talking about AI these days,

2:01 I upgraded myself to "Super AI." BIJU PK: That's how I also tell everybody.

2:05 I tell everyone that he is "Super AI." SAI PENUMURU: Super AI,

2:09 and I'm also an Oracle ACE Director for more than 10 years,

2:15 and it's a great platform.

2:18 We share the knowledge to a community across the globe.

2:22 Especially I do a lot of events in India,

2:25 and one of the things, Biju, this all started when I was— DBA days.

2:33 We know we ran into multiple challenges, multiple problems,

2:38 and most of the time, we solved the problem by looking at somebody's blog.

2:46 We had never met that guy,

2:49 but somebody sharing the information in some other part of the globe,

2:55 and we are consuming and fixing the problem.

2:59 That experience has really stayed with me.

3:03 I think one guy can actually fix many, many DBS problems.

3:08 Why can't we do a similar thing and give back to the community, right?

3:14 BIJU PK: Exactly.

3:14 SAI PENUMURU: That's where the whole thing started.

3:16 What about you?

3:17 Do you have any experience— BIJU PK: I do,

3:19 but I wanted to add to what you were just saying, to the introduction.

3:23 You've been doing more than 20 years, or almost 20 years,

3:28 the Oracle India, the India Oracle User Group.

3:31 I'm amazed how much time you spend and then all the events you coordinate.

3:37 I mean, that's a lot of community work.

3:39 It's not only sharing the knowledge,

3:42 but you also facilitate for others to share the knowledge and then learn, right?

3:47 I mean, that is awesome community work you do.

3:51 Not many people do that.

3:53 When I'm doing, I'm sharing, I write blogs.

3:56 I go to the events that you organize and then share my knowledge,

3:59 but you are providing that opportunity for people

4:03 like us to come over and share.

4:08 Moreover, I like the events that you coordinate,

4:11 where people want to meet the people like me and whoever is sharing, right?

4:18 When I say, "like me," it's not because I'm famous or anything.

4:21 I'm just in the community sharing stuff.

4:23 They want to meet people and then

4:25 understand how they can make their jobs easier.

4:30 That community, when I go to these conferences like the ones you are organizing,

4:35 I also learn quite a lot because they have solved a problem or I meet somebody.

4:41 The networking is one key thing I get

4:46 out of this meeting people in the community.

4:48 SAI PENUMURU: Yeah, absolutely Biju.

4:50 I think it's a lot of hard work.

4:52 It's my personal time.

4:53 I need to really thank my family for allowing

4:56 me to do this, but one real happiness,

5:00 as you know, we just discussed about a small situation, right?

5:05 Somebody was just blogging somewhere in the world and people are using it,

5:11 that really kicked off in can that become

5:16 a curiosity and that curiosity become a habit?

5:21 How do we make this habit a big impact in India, right?

5:25 We started this in small events, inviting all the key speakers.

5:30 For example, you have written so many books

5:32 when people love to meet you in a face-to-face.

5:36 Look at this.

5:37 We are meeting Biju.

5:38 We are getting a signature from Biju.

5:41 That personal touch is a very important community.

5:43 Yeah, we have a lot of virtual recordings.

5:47 Yeah, it's good to learn,

5:49 but I think we always prefer to have these physical meetings.

5:54 As you also said, there a lot of things from delegates because

5:59 they're asking a lot of questions in their customer challenges and all.

6:03 I think it is a fantastic community.

6:06 Also, I need to really thank all my volunteers.

6:09 It's not me doing everything.

6:13 Again, luckily, I found the people with the same passion, right?

6:19 There are many people who joined and left

6:21 because they are always looking for some immediate benefits,

6:26 but whoever has stayed with me for so many years,

6:29 they are really excellent, their career.

6:31 It's also, sometimes I feel it's like a family event.

6:36 Yourself, example, coming all the way from the US,

6:39 and we go to different cities like a family in a bus,

6:43 on a flight, and we really enjoy it.

6:46 I think that the passion is more important.

6:50 I'm not doing a job.

6:53 Anyway, so it's a lot— BIJU PK: It's not part of your job, anyway, right?

6:56 SAI PENUMURU: Yeah, it's not part of my job, but we really, really enjoy this.

7:00 BIJU PK: It's your personal time.

7:01 SAI PENUMURU: Yeah, exactly.

7:02 BIJU PK: Let me ask you, how did you get started in this?

7:05 I mean, how did you think of like

7:07 starting an organization like All India Oracle User Group?

7:09 You're wearing the T-shirt, AIOUG.

7:12 I can see that, and that's what reminded me to ask you this question.

7:17 How did you get started with AIOUG?

7:19 How did you get that idea that you

7:20 should have an organization in India like AIOUG?

7:24 What was the mission?

7:26 Do you continue the same mission or has the mission changed in recent days?

7:31 SAI PENUMURU: Yeah, I think I need

7:32 to really thank (inaudible) and also (inaudible) and myself,

7:36 so we have started two more people.

7:39 Again, as I said, really good people depending on their timings,

7:43 they contributed depending on their time, but I think I stayed from day one.

7:49 As I said, it's 19 years now.

7:53 One of the things is, again, back to the same basics, right?

7:58 I want to really help because as a DBA,

8:01 you are solving many challenges every day.

8:04 Can you actually document that in a blog?

8:08 It's also useful for you and also useful for somebody.

8:11 Again, we will not share all the confidential data.

8:16 It was there, always, I want to help because,

8:20 nowadays, you have so many conferences, so many events.

8:25 If you go back to 20 years back, we don't have this much exposure.

8:30 We always love to see reading from books.

8:35 I don't think even blogs are many, right?

8:37 BIJU PK: No, there's none out there.

8:38 SAI PENUMURU: This is what we started,

8:40 and again, the users group concept is not new.

8:43 I think there are many other countries that have users group.

8:46 We started in Bangalore, and we slowly expanded to 10 cities now.

8:51 The main aim is to bring the latest and greatest knowledge from Oracle,

8:56 and also, now it's more of multicloud, to the Indian community.

9:03 Maybe all the community members are not using the latest products,

9:07 or maybe, for example, they may not be using Oracle 26 AI Database,

9:13 but we want to show them what they can

9:16 do and how they can fix their existing problems.

9:20 Luckily, I think, because of my Oracle ACE community,

9:24 I was able to build a very good relationship

9:27 with most of the experts across Oracle and outside of Oracle.

9:31 I know who the best person is for my community to really present and attract.

9:37 There are a lot of really good speakers like (inaudible).

9:42 These are like rock stars in my conference.

9:46 That's why I started.

9:47 I think one thing is it's not easy.

9:51 It's three to six months work,

9:54 but the good part is I'm not also not doing independent— a job or something.

10:00 This is also helping me in my career

10:03 because I'm also working in Oracle technology,

10:06 and this is also Oracle, so I also learn a lot of new things.

10:12 From the Oracle ACE Program,

10:15 a lot of advantages I think we will talk about in a minute.

10:18 That way, also, I'm balancing my work as well as community.

10:22 I really enjoy that.

10:23 Yeah, there are a lot of efforts required, but honestly, I really enjoy this.

10:30 BIJU PK: Yeah, that's the thing, right?

10:32 You have to have the passion, and you should be enjoying it.

10:36 It's not a burden, not a commitment.

10:39 It is the commitment that you create yourself that, yeah,

10:42 I need to do this, and I need to help the community.

10:45 SAI PENUMURU: Yeah, and whenever you go to events like,

10:47 as I said, I'm doing for so many years.

10:50 I'm meeting people like friends.

10:52 They all come and hug me.

10:55 It's a different experience.

10:56 I can't really put it in words.

10:59 Coming back to Oracle ACE program, Biju,

11:04 why would someone need to join this Oracle ACE community?

11:07 What are the advantages?

11:09 I think you have been there more than 10-plus years.

11:14 Can you can you give us some— BIJU PK: Yeah,

11:17 so when I started giving back to the community or sharing with the community,

11:23 there was no formal program like the ACE Program or anything like that.

11:31 Way before, when we were talking about blogs or sharing stuff,

11:35 I had a I had a website on GeoCities, and it used to be in GeoCities 1997-98.

11:43 That's when I started sharing stuff,

11:46 and my inspiration was Tom Kyte at that time.

11:50 SAI PENUMURU: Thomas Kyte, yeah.

11:52 BIJU PK: Thomas Kyte had a had

11:54 a website called thomaskyte.com or something like that.

11:58 He used to share a lot of information there.

12:02 That was my inspiration where I learned it the hard way because I was

12:08 put in a job where I had to troubleshoot and performance tune the live problems.

12:15 That's where when I was brought to the US, and I came to the US,

12:21 I was assigned a project where I'm going in as an expert.

12:26 I know some stuff, but performance tuning was

12:30 a little bit away from what I was doing,

12:33 so I had to learn what to do, where to look, all that stuff.

12:40 I created a lot of scripts for troubleshooting and also

12:44 for monitoring the DBA environment, all of that stuff.

12:47 That's what I started sharing in that website.

12:50 I mean, there is nothing, no article, nothing.

12:53 It's just a bunch of scripts that will help the DBAs

12:56 to do their day-to-day jobs better and monitor the environment.

13:00 I used to call them DBAOC, like DBA on call scripts.

13:04 SAI PENUMURU: On call, yeah.

13:05 BIJU PK: DBAOC scripts, so that's how I started and that's the website.

13:10 Those scripts are still there on my website.

13:14 That's how I started giving,

13:16 and then I got into writing articles for Oracle Magazine.

13:23 That got into writing a book because that's also how

13:26 I was lucky in the right place, the right moment.

13:30 CyberX reached out to me and then I started writing.

13:33 So that's how I got into this community and the sharing and all of that stuff.

13:36 That's how I got into the program,

13:42 but the Oracle ACE Program, again, I've been doing this since 1997-98.

13:50 My first speaking session was in 2008, I believe.

13:55 It was a conference.

13:56 I was very nervous.

13:56 I still remember speaking for the first

13:59 time because I attended many conferences.

14:02 I was even nervous to shake hands with people

14:07 like Thomas Kyte or Jonathan Lewis and Cary Millsap.

14:11 Those people were the legends at that time.

14:14 I used to go to the Hot Sauce conference in Dallas,

14:17 which was the biggest conference at that time for all the geeks.

14:23 I'll be listening to them and then staring in a corner because I'm very

14:27 shy and didn't know how they will react even if I go say hi.

14:33 Nowadays, I mean, nobody has that problem because

14:35 the social media and people and all the stuff.

14:39 In those days, I mean, we don't know them because we know them

14:43 only through books or through their speaking session.

14:47 They all said that you don't have any

14:49 visibility on what kind of people they are.

14:52 That thing is not there in these days.

14:54 I mean, like these days, people out of college,

14:56 I mean, like they can meet and talk.

14:58 SAI PENUMURU: Yeah, because of the social media, it's more free form these days.

15:03 BIJU PK: Yeah, these days it's there.

15:05 Yeah, it's been good.

15:07 I got into the ACE Program.

15:10 I think the ACE Program started in 2010 or something like that time frame.

15:15 I became part of that program in 2013 as an Oracle ACE, and it's been good.

15:22 I mean, anyway, I was not doing something to be in the program.

15:28 Whatever I did qualified to be part of the program and then qualified for me

15:34 to be as an Oracle ACE Director of the top tier in that program.

15:38 I still see it that way.

15:40 I am still continuing my community effort and work and sharing my knowledge.

15:46 I continue that.

15:49 There is a point system and all of that stuff.

15:51 I mean, that's on the side.

15:53 Whatever I share, I mean, I document that for the ACE program.

15:57 Then at the end of the year, they calculate and then they determine whether I am

16:02 qualified to be part of the program or not.

16:05 I think the MVP program is also the same, similar way.

16:08 It's a community program.

16:09 They need to have some monitoring,

16:11 some guidelines around it and stuff, so that's all.

16:15 I'm sure you got into the program because of the AIOUG.

16:19 SAI PENUMURU: Yeah, exactly.

16:20 I think I'm into not writing books or something.

16:25 I'm more into, I think, even the same situation, right?

16:29 I don't speak to people, but this platform really created me to really,

16:34 you know, excel in this, right?

16:37 I'm not saying I'm a very good public speaker,

16:39 but I think I'm learning every conference.

16:42 I'm learning whenever I'm presenting in these conferences.

16:45 It's the same feeling.

16:47 You know, I feel like my day one.

16:51 Coming back to this, yeah, I've been like you,

16:54 only I just I think Murali submitted my nomination as an Oracle ACE.

17:00 Then because of my contributions, they promoted me to Oracle ACE Director.

17:08 I think most of us are not, "I need to get into Oracle ACE Program.

17:15 Let's do all the stuff," right?

17:16 We are not in that picture.

17:18 I think we are continuously doing this same passion from day one.

17:23 Honestly, if I put all my points,

17:25 it's going to be like a thousand points or something.

17:29 I think the Oracle ACE community is a very known platform for many people.

17:38 Especially, this will help you in your companies

17:41 or when you are talking to customers.

17:43 When you say, when you go with the Oracle ACE Director title,

17:46 you will be treated like you are the guru in that particular area.

17:50 Again, there are a lot of benefits.

17:52 You'll be part of a beta program.

17:54 If you are interested, you can write free certifications.

17:58 You can actually, as an Oracle ACE Director, for example,

18:01 if you're presenting in a different country or a location from your home,

18:07 Oracle pretty much covers your travel and stay, right?

18:11 Also, you are connected to a couple of product managers.

18:15 You're continuously giving the feedback, and you have, for example,

18:20 I'd say it's not your authority,

18:22 but you can change their product strategy and roadmap.

18:26 You have that much power to do that and plenty of fun.

18:30 Again, these are one side.

18:32 I think one thing I really love is meeting people, so coming to this MVP event,

18:38 spending time with you for a couple of days,

18:41 I think that's a different experience.

18:42 BIJU PK: Definitely, so we're talking about the Oracle ACE Program.

18:48 I see the same on the MVP side also, right?

18:51 I mean, you have a lot of benefits and in the same community,

18:55 I see the same family feeling, even though this is the first time here

19:00 and we don't know many of our family members.

19:03 It is like, okay, hey, hi, kind of thing in this conference.

19:07 I'm sure that'll change the next time we come because

19:10 maybe people are connected with a lot of people on LinkedIn,

19:14 so that community is growing right now.

19:18 I see the same on— similar community in the Microsoft side at MVP.

19:25 I'm very happy that, again, just like what happened on the Oracle side,

19:30 the same thing happened on the Microsoft side for me.

19:33 Even before the multicloud and stuff,

19:36 I was involved in running Oracle workloads in Azure even

19:41 before the Oracle Database at Azure program or anything like that.

19:45 Microsoft and Azure were part of my career and my job,

19:49 so I've been doing that and then also

19:53 sharing with the community how you can use Oracle

19:57 in the multicloud and Oracle on Microsoft Azure with no

20:03 latency and no license penalty and things like that.

20:07 That caught the attention of the Microsoft product teams,

20:11 and that's how I got into the program.

20:13 I'm sure you also got into the program the same

20:15 way because there was no Microsoft Oracle Azure or Oracle.

20:22 I mean Microsoft— what is our thing called?

20:26 SAI PENUMURU: Oracle Database at Azure.

20:27 BIJU PK: Azure, but no, the program.

20:29 SAI PENUMURU: Yeah, Azure Solutions and Ecosystem.

20:31 BIJU PK: Correct, Azure Solutions and Ecosystem.

20:34 That program was not even there when we started doing Oracle on Azure.

20:40 I'm glad that that program is there and that gave us the opportunity to be here,

20:45 part of this community.

20:48 I see the same on the Microsoft side also and am very

20:53 proud and humbled to be a part of the two programs here.

20:56 SAI JANAKIRAM: Yeah, I think it's very great, Biju.

20:59 I think somehow we are lucky because we are brand new MVPs.

21:05 We are maybe, I think you are very new.

21:06 I think I'm at least three months into this program.

21:11 I think a lot of learnings, as you said, right, and is also a bigger community.

21:16 Microsoft has a vast number of products,

21:20 and that's one thing that's definitely going to be

21:23 a challenge for us to learn, so many products.

21:26 Aa good part is one thing, we are very close to the product groups,

21:34 especially both are working in our organizations on Oracle Database at Azure.

21:41 We will come to know what they are actually releasing in next months.

21:46 As I said, we can actually influence, like, for example,

21:49 one of your customers is actually looking for certain product's future, right?

21:54 That, you can actually go directly to the product groups and say,

21:58 hey, here is the customer.

22:00 Can you help us?

22:01 We have that power connection with this Microsoft MVP program.

22:06 I feel really privileged to have,

22:09 especially now, everywhere we are talking about multicloud.

22:13 I think we are in a very special position,

22:16 where we are into Oracle and also Microsoft.

22:21 This one thing, definitely, community is definitely in our blood.

22:26 We will definitely make sure that this knowledge is passed across the globe,

22:31 especially for my community.

22:33 Also, from your professional point of view,

22:36 you can also use this channel to basically help your customers.

22:42 I think, honestly, this is a very unique position we are in.

22:46 BIJU PK: Right.

22:48 SAI PENUMURU: As I said, again, there are a lot of advantages.

22:51 If you want to be part a of MVP, you will get Microsoft Azure Cloud credits.

22:56 I think I hear it's around $12,000.

22:59 BIJU PK: Right, a thousand dollars a month.

23:00 SAI PENUMURU: Also, you get most of the software free, like Office 365.

23:05 Also, yesterday, we were roaming in the Microsoft Shop.

23:09 We got like a 20% discount on many products,

23:13 very excited, and the first time in Redmond campus,

23:16 I think I was just looking at the buildings, the number of buildings.

23:21 BIJU PK: It's like a city.

23:22 The labs are amazing.

23:23 SAI PENUMURU: Yeah, it's a city, and we have to— there's no way to walk,

23:26 by the way, so we have to use the shuttle, and it's so exciting.

23:32 BIJU PK: Yeah, it's all new.

23:33 This is the first time I'm in the Microsoft campus,

23:35 so it is very exciting to be in the campus and— the way

23:39 the buildings are structured and how people

23:42 move from one building to another building.

23:43 SAI PENUMURU: One building to the other building, it's like a separate island.

23:47 Coming back to Oracle Database at Azure, so let's talk about something.

23:52 If somebody was listening to our recording,

23:56 what is, basically, Oracle database at Azure?

23:59 Why does a customer need to use this product?

24:04 BIJU PK: This is a very novel idea, I would say, the Oracle Database at Azure,

24:10 because you would never imagine that two cloud providers will come together,

24:15 and then one cloud provider is going to let the other cloud inside your cloud.

24:21 Basically, Oracle OCI is running inside Azure,

24:26 so it is the OCI control pane and the OCI services.

24:31 All of that is available for the database,

24:33 not none of the other services, but the database services.

24:36 You have the Oracle database on Exadata dedicated or Autonomous dedicated,

24:42 Exascale based database service, Autonomous database serverless, Autonomous.

24:48 Even recently, they announced Autonomous on Dedicated also.

24:51 SAI PENUMURU: Dedicated also, yeah.

24:53 BIJU PK: All of that, even Golden Gate Services, Autonomous Recovery Service,

24:58 everything connected to the Oracle database is natively available in Azure,

25:04 inside the Azure data center.

25:06 The benefit for the customers is you have low latency connectivity

25:10 between your Oracle database and application

25:13 servers and your integrating applications.

25:16 That is the number one benefit.

25:18 Then you also have the licensing benefit because you are using the OCI services,

25:23 the OCI metrics, the OCI cost.

25:25 That is available within Azure.

25:28 So it's a win-win for both Microsoft— SAI PENUMURU: And Oracle.

25:32 BIJU PK:— Oracle, and the customers.

25:33 SAI PENUMURU: Yeah, exactly.

25:34 I think, give a little background,

25:37 so most of the enterprise customers run their databases on Oracle.

25:41 Full stop.

25:42 Right?

25:42 There's no way to escape because, yeah,

25:47 there are other databases, nothing wrong with other databases,

25:50 but if you are running mission critical systems,

25:53 most of the customers use Oracle because

25:57 of 45 years of innovation on database, number one.

26:01 They all stuck before this model because

26:04 they chose Azure as their first cloud strategy,

26:07 and they had started moving the applications and all,

26:10 but when they move Oracle database on Azure VM,

26:14 which comes with a lot of complications.

26:16 Your license is to 2x license.

26:18 You can't run Oracle RAG.

26:20 You can't get Exadata.

26:21 All these features required for enterprise

26:26 applications and database are missing,

26:28 so I think they started with Interconnect.

26:33 Interconnect was good, but again,

26:34 they are not able to solve the latency challenges.

26:38 BIJU PK: We have a few customers on Interconnect,

26:41 as well as they had another program called Database on Azure, remember that?

26:45 I mean, that's the autonomous database

26:46 and the base database available in sitting in OCI,

26:50 but they are behind the scenes.

26:51 SAI PENUMURU: Connected, yeah, interconnected,

26:52 it's an Oracle Database for Azure.

26:55 BIJU PK: For Azure, yeah.

26:56 SAI PENUMURU: Yeah, exactly.

26:57 BIJU PK: That thing is good.

26:59 I mean, that was good at— I mean, the best at that time,

27:02 like a few years back, three, four years back.

27:04 Again, we saw that like five— I think

27:07 the Interconnect has been available since 2019, I believe.

27:09 SAI PENUMURU: Yeah.

27:10 BIJU PK: Six years or seven years now,

27:12 we have Interconnect, but the partnership is going really great.

27:16 It's a very good partnership between Oracle and Microsoft,

27:19 and that is helping the customers tremendously.

27:23 SAI PENUMURU: You know, now you can run the way you are

27:27 running Oracle Database on OCI exactly same in Azure,

27:31 so now a lot of advantages.

27:34 Number one is they are in 33 regions.

27:36 Microsoft is the first customer to support this Oracle database in Azure.

27:41 Again, you also have GCP and AWS.

27:45 One thing for my customers, what we are solving is one thing that is

27:52 the biggest challenge of Oracle Databases is all spread across.

27:55 One of the customers, we have like 5,000 databases.

27:59 You know, running 5,000 databases in individual VMs,

28:02 like 200 database administrators, and now this is a good opportunity.

28:07 Number one, there's no license implications,

28:10 and the way you run it on OCI, you can run it on Azure.

28:13 Now we are consolidating the 5,000 databases into 50 Exadata.

28:18 That way, you know, sorry to say we are eliminating a lot of DBAs,

28:22 but it's going to be cost savings for the customer

28:27 because their operations costs are reducing more than 50%, right?

28:33 One more important thing is now Oracle

28:35 Database is actually sitting next to Azure Services.

28:40 Azure has a lot of AI services, so data is very key for any AI services.

28:48 Now both are in the same location.

28:51 Now you can do a lot of magic.

28:53 BIJU PK: Yep.

28:54 Yeah, even people might say like, hey, even without Database at Azure,

29:01 the AI services can access my on-prem Oracle Database or send data to on-prem.

29:07 Yeah, there is, but there is a cost involved.

29:08 There's something called egress and latency.

29:12 That is what is disappearing with Oracle Database at Azure.

29:16 As you mentioned, Exadata is a very powerful platform,

29:19 and that is designed for Oracle Database.

29:21 It is taken into consideration in the requirements for Oracle,

29:24 high-performing databases, data warehouse, data lakes,

29:28 that type of workload and your mission-critical OLP applications.

29:33 It is designed for that, and then,

29:35 you are able to combine all your databases into that platform.

29:40 You gain a tremendous performance boost,

29:42 not only in cost savings but performance savings also.

29:45 The management is pretty easy.

29:47 I mean, you click a button and schedule your patch.

29:50 It does the patching.

29:52 SAI JANAKIRAM: Yeah, without downtime, right, so you can you can,

29:57 basically, honestly, this is— I'm very excited.

30:00 In coming days, I don't think multicloud is just a option.

30:04 It is it is going to be mandatory for most

30:08 of the customers and love to see this initiative from Oracle.

30:12 I think Larry says, "There's no walled gardens between these cloud service

30:18 providers." What are the other challenges you see in this type of architecture?

30:24 Have you seen any challenges with Oracle Database at Azure?

30:30 BIJU PK: Challenges, I think one— I wouldn't say challenge because you

30:36 have to be on a supported version of Oracle Database.

30:40 I mean, there are still many legacy applications.

30:45 SAI JANAKIRAM: Using less than 12C— BIJU PK: The 12C or 10G databases,

30:50 all those versions, so that that may not run on the database at Azure.

30:56 You have to upgrade the database for sure, so that is that is one thing.

31:03 Then you have more flexibility in running database at Azure.

31:13 I see more benefits than challenges.

31:16 The challenges, yeah, I mean,

31:17 networking is the networking may be a challenge for some customers.

31:23 The IAM and the security,

31:26 because you need to have the both IAM and your Entra ID there,

31:32 once you figure that out and once you configure that, it is seamless,

31:38 Database at Azure, because you wouldn't know

31:40 that it is sitting in a different control plane.

31:44 The other thing I would say is for the creation

31:51 of the database and the provisioning and the simple monitoring,

31:58 like up-down monitoring,

31:59 all of that, you don't have to log into the OCI plane at all,

32:03 but if you are a hardcore DBA and want

32:06 to troubleshoot looking at the internals of Oracle Database,

32:10 if there is a need for that, then you

32:13 may have to log into the OCI Control Plane.

32:17 That's one challenge.

32:18 I see some customers still do it, but I see it.

32:22 I mean, if you are a DBA,

32:24 you are using Oracle Enterprise Manager or some other tool.

32:27 This is part of that tool set.

32:28 You may have to log into one more tool to get the details.

32:32 SAI PENUMURU: Yeah.

32:32 It's good to have a single plane of class,

32:35 monitoring both the cloud service providers, but I see some other challenges.

32:40 The first thing is when we approach some of the customers, they say, hey, no,

32:44 I don't want another cloud because I need

32:46 to go to see a chief customer or— sorry,

32:49 security officer to get all the approval.

32:51 That is one thing.

32:52 I still see some of the organizations, they're still having some challenges.

32:58 Also, again, this is what I— BIJU PK:

33:04 That's only if you tell everybody that it is OCI sitting inside Azure, right?

33:09 If it is just an Azure service because it is available in Azure Portal,

33:13 you can click "Provision Manager"— SAI JANAKIRAM: Still,

33:16 people think, you're using— honestly,

33:18 they're using another cloud service provider because they

33:22 have to sign an agreement with Oracle and all.

33:25 Another thing I think you covered, observability is a very key thing.

33:29 Hopefully, the Microsoft we were discussing yesterday, the product managers,

33:33 or the promise to bring some of the— for example,

33:36 in Oracle, we have the Observability and Management Platform.

33:40 In that, there are so many models.

33:41 One of the models is database management.

33:44 That's very powerful.

33:45 You can pin down exactly where the problem is.

33:49 If they can bring those features into Azure,

33:52 that would be fantastic to have one location to monitor and solve the problem.

33:58 Another challenge we see is people are not consolidating.

34:05 There is there is some fear because if you look at any customers,

34:11 they all divided into multiple businesses and they say,

34:16 okay, I don't really care about your entire thing.

34:18 You know, just give my database and application as is, right?

34:23 BIJU PK: Yeah.

34:23 SAI PENUMURU: They think everything is perfectly

34:26 working and they don't want to disturb anything,

34:29 so I think that that mindset should change, because if they— I think

34:35 in my whole experience of this application transformation,

34:38 I see we have technology, we have all the architectures, everything,

34:42 but when you go and talk to the application owner, he will say no.

34:47 BIJU PK: Yeah, because they care only about

34:48 their application and they want to— it's not only caring.

34:51 They want to protect their application, right?

34:53 They don't want to have the noisy neighbor problem or something

34:56 like that, and they are worried about all of that.

34:58 SAI PENUMURU: They say it's perfectly working.

35:00 Why should I change, right?

35:01 BIJU PK: Exactly.

35:02 SAI PENUMURU: That's one thing— I don't know.

35:04 Some organizations are it's coming from the CXO side.

35:09 You know, they have to.

35:10 They must do it.

35:11 They have to support a size to do

35:15 this, but some organizations are not really pushing.

35:18 That's why I think you see it's not really accelerating very quickly,

35:22 but I'm sure people recognize this.

35:25 There is a lot of cost savings in this model,

35:28 so I think— I'm sure we will— coming days,

35:30 you will see more people are using this multicloud model.

35:36 Yeah, so coming back to the MVP point,

35:42 since we are the first MVPs on this Oracle Database at Azure product,

35:47 do you want to say something to— especially, I think,

35:51 we will focus on Oracle guys who are actually working on Microsoft technology.

35:57 I think it's more of a responsibility for us,

36:00 because next year we want to see more MVPs are coming here in this category.

36:06 BIJU PK: Right.

36:06 Yeah, I think there are a lot of people who are doing Oracle on Azure.

36:10 SAI PENUMURU: Yeah.

36:11 BIJU PK: It's just that they probably aren't a community person.

36:15 Maybe they are not sharing stuff.

36:17 There are a lot of people like that.

36:18 I mean, so that's there, and even in our ACE community, with our people,

36:23 I know quite a few people who work

36:25 in multicloud and on Google and Microsoft and AWS databases.

36:31 There are people using these services, even if it is not Database at Azure.

36:38 They may be running Oracle on Azure, different forms, right?

36:43 I think that is there.

36:45 I mean, hopefully, this recording, what we are going to share,

36:49 will help some of those ACEs to come forward and reach out to the Microsoft

36:56 product managers and then share their contributions

36:59 and stuff and get into the program.

37:02 SAI PENUMURU: Yeah, and also, we are we are here to help.

37:04 Please reach out to us, definitely.

37:07 Since now we are into this program for a couple of months,

37:11 we know exactly— we can we can help you where to focus,

37:15 what type of contributions you need to do to become MVP.

37:19 Again, don't race for the title, but I think, on the another side,

37:24 we want to really bring more MVPs into this category,

37:27 and we want to get more feedback from the ground field, right?

37:33 That way, we can we can improve this particular

37:35 product and accelerate this adoption into multiple customers.

37:40 BIJU PK: Yeah, I think the clarification you just made,

37:43 maybe I'll just clarify that one more time.

37:46 We just want to identify the people who are

37:49 doing the contributions and bring them into the program.

37:52 We don't want you to start contributing to get into the program.

37:56 SAI PENUMURU: No, start contributing is also fine, but don't race for it.

38:00 BIJU PK: Yeah, race for it, like don't— yeah.

38:02 SAI PENUMURU: We'd absolutely love to— please reach out to us in LinkedIn,

38:07 whatever the channels.

38:08 Definitely, we want to bring more MVPs in this program.

38:11 You know, honestly, yesterday we were

38:13 at the party and a lot of Microsoft products.

38:18 We were the only two people on the Oracle side.

38:21 Definitely, we want to bring more people in this category.

38:24 BIJU PK: Yeah, definitely.

38:27 SAI PENUMURU: Any closing comments, Biju?

38:29 BIJU PK: No.

38:30 I'm excited for this Microsoft and Oracle partnership and the MVP Program.

38:35 I'm looking forward to extending my Azure knowledge,

38:41 where I'm looking forward to see how we can use the database available

38:48 in Azure and use the data to facilitate more insights for the business.

38:55 How can we use Copilot to get the information

38:57 or Microsoft Fabric to get to the data and more insight?

39:03 That's the area I'll be focusing in the next— I mean, maybe in 2026.

39:08 I would say I want to learn in that area.

39:11 That's my goal here, but this program is going to help reach that goal for me.

39:19 SAI PENUMURU: I think we have discussed a lot of topics

39:23 on this, and please feel free to reach out to us in LinkedIn, whatever channels.

39:28 Especially, if you are in— Biju is in India.

39:32 Please reach out to him face-to-face, and so what are your closing comments?

39:37 What advice do you want to give it to the community, Biju?

39:41 BIJU PK: Yeah, I mean, the community is, again— I'm here to help.

39:46 You can reach me on LinkedIn or my social media channels,

39:50 but this is a an exciting program for myself personally and for the customers.

39:58 I cater to my company, and they are like me,

40:02 we are very excited for this program because my company and myself,

40:09 our background is all Oracle.

40:11 When Oracle services are available in another cloud natively,

40:15 that is an exciting thing for us.

40:18 If you haven't explored Microsoft Database at Azure,

40:24 please look into that, get into that, and if you have any questions,

40:29 reach out to myself or Sai.

40:31 We are here.

40:32 If you are interested in the MVP Program, or the ACE Program for that matter,

40:37 reach out to us and we are glad to help.

40:40 SAI PENUMURU: Yeah, thank you.

40:41 Thank you so much, Biju, again.

40:43 I don't want to repeat, so this is an exciting time for us,

40:48 especially one side is the MVP community,

40:52 since we have to take more responsibility to bring more MVPs.

40:57 Definitely, we will help you.

40:59 If you're seeing this video, please reach out to us.

41:01 We will definitely help you.

41:03 Coming back to my professional thing,

41:05 I'm really excited to see we have done a lot of migrations.

41:09 Again, migrations are easy.

41:10 It's Oracle to Oracle,

41:12 and now Oracle database is sitting inside next to Azure Services.

41:17 What else can we do, right?

41:18 This is a big homework for us.

41:21 We have to learn some of the AI services in Azure.

41:25 Can we quickly use AI services on top of Oracle?

41:28 We were talking about talking to product managers,

41:32 just use Teams and say, what's my— how my application is doing?

41:37 You'll get response saying it's all perfect— or any performance issues.

41:41 "Can you go and fix my performance issue in Teams?" They'll say,

41:45 "Go and fix that," so that's what we are looking at these coming days,

41:50 sorry to say, right?

41:53 We have to take on all these mundane tasks

41:55 and get into all these agents and solve the problems.

42:00 BIJU PK: Yeah, now we see everything.

42:02 Everybody is talking about agents and agentic

42:04 and agent applications and all of that.

42:07 Soon, the DBAs will also talk about agents.

42:10 SAI PENUMURU: Yeah, exactly.

42:12 Thank you so much for listening to us, and hopefully,

42:15 we'll do more in virtual recordings or virtual Zoom calls.

42:22 Thank you so much for listening in.

42:24 Catch you later.

42:25 Thank you.

42:25 BIJU PK: Thank you.