Oracle CloudWorld Analyst Takes and Takeaways – Enterprising Insights – EP37

Hello everyone. I'm Keith Kirkpatrick, research director with the Futurum Group, and I'd like to welcome you to Enterprising Insights. It's our weekly podcast that explores the latest developments in the enterprise software market and the technologies that underpin these platforms, applications, and tools.

This week I'd like to talk about Oracle Cloud World 2024, covering the major announcements and takeaways from the end. Then I'd like to get into my rent or rave segment where I take one element in the market and I either champion it or criticize it to help me out. Today, I have two special guests from the analyst community who also attended Cloud World.

We have what, Robert Kramer, VP and Principal Analyst at More Insights and Strategy and Guy Courier, CTO at Visible Impact. Welcome gentlemen. Good to be here.

Thank you so much, Keith. It's exciting to see you, uh, here and previously, uh, a couple days ago. Yeah, Absolutely.

Well, why don't we get right into it here. Um, big event we had Cloud World and Sweet World Co-located in beautiful Las Vegas. We're gonna get your, uh, thoughts, first of all on some of your overall takeaways from the event in terms of usefulness, not useful.

Um, yeah, pretty standard stuff. Where there something really that kinda stuck out. Uh, Robert, why don't we start with you and I'll go to Guy.

You know, I thought it was extremely, uh, well put together. I liked how they did Sweet World, which is NetSuite's and Oracle Cloud World. At the same time, it allowed us to go back and forth.

Logistics were a little, uh, cumbersome because of where, uh, sweet World was in a tent across the street at es. But at the same time, it allowed us to, to really see both and get a lot out of it. Now, the details we'll finally get into later, but from that perspective, I thought it was well done.

Okay. Yeah, I mean, first year for me to attend any of Sweet World. Um, and uh, also it was interesting to have 'em both happening at the same time.

Not sure how that happened. Um, frankly, not sure that that was a great idea because, uh, I suppose, you know, they have, uh, significantly different customer bases in some ways. But for us, poor analysts, um, I did feel a little schizophrenia, um, especially because sweet world man, razzle dazzle, wham bam.

Thank you, ma'am. What a keynote. Um, and uh, there was a little show there was dancing, you know, uh, quite impressive.

And I also thought that that kind of went with the user interface makeover that NetSuite has just launched. Um, I do think it is kind of like, you know, going for a fine meal. It's not just the taste of it, it's the presentation of it.

It makes it more of a pleasure to use. I thought that was kind of a big deal on the NetSuite side. Um, it, we'll talk about a lot of other features and stuff.

Um, interestingly on the cloud world side, um, there, there were two really big announcements, um, that maybe we'll get into. One being, uh, Oracle at AWS, uh, completing the trifecta for Oracle. 'cause they're already at Azure and at Google Cloud.

Um, uh, as well as, uh, enhancements to the Oracle 23 database, um, to, in their words, unify relational vector, not vector, sorry, relational, um, document and, uh, un unstructured, um, databases all in one single query available engine, um, out. But it was kind of a meat and potato side to my mind from the Oracle side and the razzle-dazzle, um, which I'm trying to emphasize is not purely window. I mean, this is a productivity issue, but the razzle-dazzle side from NetSuite.

Well, yeah, I, it's interesting you mention that because my, you know, just to give my impression, when I think of what NetSuite did, they really impressed me. Obviously it was a, you know, kind of a neat opening there, kind of the, a mini spear experience. I think that's what they're kind of going for.

But in terms of the, you know, uh, number of new features and enhancements and the breadth of them that are now, uh, available on NetSuite, I was impressed. And I sort of felt like it's something that they really had to do. They were falling behind a bit.

And I, I think they needed to have sort of a big splash. I mean, I'm not sure what needs your thought at, but for me, I was, I felt like it's something they had to come out the market and say, look, you know, we're here, you know, we're a, uh, essentially a subsidiary of, of Oracle to a large extent in terms of leveraging a lot of their technology. They need to, you know, really demonstrate that they were able to take a lot of the work behind the scenes and then make it actually, uh, you know, functional within the platform.

Y you made some good points there. 'cause I think a lot of those features should have already been there. I think the uni user interface should have been there already, but it does look built.

But at the same time, I think the competition is coming a little bit more up the speed, you know, they have Microsoft's products, they have Acton, they have in fours, they have Sage. So they're not, they don't have a stranglehold on that small, medium size like they used to, even though they have 40,000 pipe. There's other choices.

That's what I'd meant. So some of those other choices have some of these features, but then user interface, I'm not sure I agree with you both. I still think it looks a little antiquated.

Um, it, it, it looks much better than the Redwood is what they call it. But at the same time, it doesn't go throughout the whole system. They're going partial.

So we actually use it inside of our company, and that's if we're actually dealing good implementation right now. And we, uh, think there's some of the people that use it, feel, it looks like a little bit 2000 ish, you know, as far as the, the look and feel and even some of the newer stuff. So, um, I think it's needed, and I know I'm maybe not agreeing with you guys, but I, I think what they did was needed.

And maybe the razzle Basel was a little showy because it was hovering up some of the things, um, that they had to do. Yeah, interesting. I mean, I think from my perspective, I was looking at it, uh, comparing it where they were to where they are now, uh, because, you know, I was at an event they had back in May, and I was thoroughly underwhelmed at that point and felt like, you know, that that previous interface and just the fact that it was hard to query information that was totally, you know, transported back 20 years ago.

So, uh, let's, let's quickly shift to the Oracle side, uh, guy, what, you know, you mentioned, you know, sort of the big announcement there, uh, with AWS, um, how, how, you know, to me that seems pretty, pretty game changing because again, it's, to me, it's all about, you know, meeting customers where they are. And that is a, a, a key part of the strategy. I think that a key Oracle strategy, um, for, you know, almost since its founding, is to make the Oracle database, the essential enterprise database.

And part of that has been the inclusion of Oracle, um, in a lot of other stacks and solutions. Uh, most famously I think S-A-P-S-A-P bought sase, SAP created hana, and yet still Oracle is a foundational component of an SAP implementation. Um, by the same token, with this explosion of, uh, no sequel, and by the way, I should correct myself, it wasn't, uh, what they're announcing is not a no sql, but a, a, a graph.

I kind of mix the two in my mind. So the, what they're trying to do is sort of unify the traditional relational with document, with graph database functionality all in one interface. Um, when you combine that with the cloud strategy that I had for now, you know, three years or so of being able to host with full performance pricing parity, uh, unified operations, being able to host Oracle in whatever version, um, it at another provider, it's a recognition by Oracle that where the software has moved, including SAP, but just all the software owned software, everything that's moved into these clouds.

And they still want to be a reliable core database for any application now that they've completed the trifecta, um, that allows their own Oracle customers, which has always been their primary source of new revenue to continue to do what they're doing in whatever clouds and maintain the, uh, attachment of the application and all the benefits that derive from it to Oracle. And the funny thing is, everyone anticipated, everyone expected, it's still huge news. It's huge, huge with Azure.

it, and I, I, I want to add one other thing. The the devil is in the details. Oracle's famously paying attention to detail here.

You cannot discount the pricing parody issue that where wherever you are, um, running Oracle and, uh, whether you are managing it through the Azure AWS or Google console or measuring, doing it through your Oracle console, however you are deploying and managing it, the pricing is gonna be the same. That makes a really big difference because it frees up customers, uh, to choose what they want to do, where, and how. And it makes the Oracle option more attractive that way.

And that's, that's not an easy thing to do. Pricing parody is really not an easy thing to do. So I'm impressed by that part as well.

You know, uh, one of the other things that, you know, kind of, uh, following on that, that theme of letting customers do what they want, where they want, uh, if we look at the, you know, just the way that they're approaching integrations on the application side, it seems that that is again, you know, falling in line with what the industry expects. Uh, Robert, can you comment on that? Well, you know, I spent a lot of time on the, on the ERP, uh, area.

I've met with a lot of the leaders. And, you know, one of the things that they have a luxury of is, like you said, they have the database, they have, you know, OCI, they have, um, well, alliances like you mentioned AWS, but they have a new one, which they, uh, release them with, uh, IBM, and they're putting a lot of, um, uh, time and money into the integrations and these transformations of ERP and companies that wanna take more advantage of, you know, Oracle applications. And they're bringing in IBM to help 'em with that.

So I think that's a big deal. I think that ERP world is looking to actually utilized the applications a little bit more and versus reaching out to these SaaS applications and adding more technology stacks, uh, to these comp enterprises. So I saw a lot of that happening.

I'll comment a little bit more to the, you have some, some theories on that as well, but I, I see that as being a trend. And then the IBM is, uh, one of those things that, uh, shows you that, but also, Capgemini also did purchase a, a company for similar reasons to help out with SAT implementation. Yeah, I mean, it, it, you, um, one thing there that, that you mentioned, which is interesting, is if we think about what Oracle was doing on their application side, uh, they were, you know, they made a big announcement about the, you know, number of new generative AI functions that are, are basically incorporated or embedded within the platform.

Uh, two things that really kinda struck me. One is they've been, since I've been talking to them, they've been kind of doubling down on the notion that this generative AI stuff, this is not sort of a bolt on technology. This is not something that we're going to ask users to pay an extra 25 50 whatever, a hundred dollars a month, it's just going to be included in the product.

And it's not free. It is just something added value that comes in, you know, customers are paying for that license. And generative AI is essentially a core component of that functionality.

What's interesting though, is in talking, I had a one-on-one with, uh, you know, an ERP guy there who basically said, you know, their big challenge of course is certain customers in certain industries are going, this gen AI stuff is great, but we're the regulated industry. We can't turn it on for everything because either there's a regulatory aspect or, you know, we're just not trusting it yet. And I'm just curious to see, you know, what you guys think about, you know, Oracle's approach with this, because obviously they're definitely, are you doing the whole, Hey, you know, come to the cloud here, you know, let's make sure that you're on the cloud and we're gonna give you all of this great generative AI functionality is done enough to get folks, uh, to migrate.

I mean, I know we can talk about, you know, what are their competitors SAP who have been obviously beating the drum on that for the last several years. I mean, I think you have a very complicated subject matter there. You know, a lot of the enterprises are, are, are, are complicated.

So everybody, I think it's the, you know, the flip side of people think that ERP solutions are complicated, but I think it's the enterprises. So when they're complicating, then how are they gonna use, you know, gen AI at the maximum? I think the data management is a gigantic issue.

I an issue is also these companies, ERPs located OnPrem or are they in the cloud? Are they tier two? Were they running, you know, tier one on-prem and then another tier that's in the cloud?

So using Gen AI is not a flip of the switch, like you said. So I think that the data management component is a gigantic component. I sat in on a few sessions yesterday.

Snowflake had a manufacturing session. Um, they had like a data, um, um, kind of a workshop for analysts and they were saying exactly the same thing, that they think that gen AI is the thing of the future embedded everywhere. At the same time, between those address the challenge I just mentioned, on top of having a change process, you're probably gonna have a, a slim chance of having this in fall.

Guy. Any thoughts on that? Well, I think that, um, Oracle Cloud, so lean back up a second.

What's the biggest, who and what applications are the biggest consumers of Oracle Cloud infrastructure? Um, I don't have any insight or information on that, but I would guess it's largely Oracle applications. Oracle Fusion, Oracle Fusion applications.

Uh, they're not eating their own young, they have been, uh, producing their own stacks, uh, since even, you know, before, uh, uh, before, uh, the acquisition of, um, of, uh, uh, sun, um, and the acquisition of Sun allowed them to build highly, they, the, the, the focus of the company on outstanding customer experience paired with outstandingly high prices, I might add. But outstanding customer experience meant a desire to control and understand the entire stack. And the way they responded ultimately to cloud was not to say, okay, now we're gonna try to do that in the other hyperscalers, but we're gonna build our own hyperscaler.

And they're one of the few companies with the ability to do that. It's worth noting that, and I'm gonna get around to the Gen AI in a second, but the, the, it's worth noting that they actually have a pretty accomplished SAP practice. Last year they migrated a 180 terabyte, uh, SAP implementation, uh, over to Oracle Cloud for a Canadian retailer that is a giant implementation.

Let me tell you, a giant production implementation occurred that that, uh, was accomplished over a weekend. They're taking the same approach to the generative AI work that they're doing. They're owning the stack, they're building their own infrastructure.

They're building in from the infrastructure up and through the Oracle database, which is the foundation of, you know, of it. Um, they're building the kinds of controls that you need for compliant or regulated industries, or frankly, any enterprise of any size. And in fact, a lot of enterprises of small sizes.

So I'm not saying, oh, you can just trust them. I wouldn't say that to anybody, but it's almost like I wouldn't call them, you know, anywhere on a par with, uh, uh, with one of the big three. But what you're looking at is a global cloud environment that has this enterprise focus, and yet not the kind of proprietary, uh, nature that, uh, the IBM cloud does.

This may be as a differentiated addition to the suite of cloud tools for hosting IT and building applications that, uh, uh, you know, the industry already has something unique and different. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I think, you know, the fact that they own the entire stack, I mean, that's something that they've been leaning into for quite some time.

And, and so because that gives them cost certainty in the way that many, many other vendors that they compete against, whether we're talking ERP or we're talking cx whether we're talking, you know, CRM, whatever it might be that a lot of their competitors don't have. And that's why they can go out and say, Hey, we're not ultimately concerned about, you know, trying to figure out the, on the back of the napkin, how are we gonna make this gen AI stuff work from a cost perspective, because they're the ones who can obviously have much greater control over it. And, you know, and certainly the other thing is, uh, and this is something I've been hearing quite a bit, is when generative AI sort of, you know, jumped into the public's consciousness, there was a lot of talk about how expensive it is, and it is, but you know, as any technology sort of starts to mature, you do start to see declines in price and certainly a large, uh, you know, full stack vendor like Oracle is gonna benefit from that, perhaps more than some of the, the ones that actually don't on the technology.

Yeah. And, and I think both, well, I think both of you guys are me the point, the technology is absolutely there that with Oracle, but I, my point was to actually have a business impact to actually have, you know, success. I think there's some things that need to happen on the other end, or the customers be prepared to actually follow through and take it the whole way, um, where they see that business impact.

'cause that's what it's all about. Is it dispensing? Are they able to execute?

Do they have the staff? And also some pretty big issues, and is the data ready for ai? But, you know, according to Larry, even, you know, we'll probably talk about him.

He was fabulous. He thinks everybody's ready, you know, and you know, to be, you know, a fabulous implementation no matter what. But he's a pleasure.

What else is he gonna say? I I, I, there's an interesting though, Robert, I mean, tell me what you think. There's an interesting opportunity here if you are, um, a a, an application manager or enterprise architect or, or, or other strategist, actually, let me put that a different way.

If you're fulfilling that role in a smaller company, in a company that doesn't warrant a role like that, you're some form of, uh, an IT strategist or a CTO in a smaller company. Oracle has not exactly been out of reach to you historically, but the kind of investment, uh, that you need to make, uh, not just in money but in time and in, uh, talent development and management and so forth to take advantage of the, these Oracle stacks has normally been considerable. But when Oracle embrace the cloud, the public cloud with OCI, I might make these remarks about how the prime customer for OCI is Oracle itself, including NetSuite.

Incidentally, um, I might say that, but in fact, it's still an open cloud that anyone can start using. And there are all kinds of levels of ability to now to, uh, uh, take advantage of whether it's the database, Oracle database or Fusion or anything else, um, even as a smaller firm. And that's clearly an opportunity Larry is pursuing.

But it's also an opportunity if you are paying any attention to this news that it's something, and again, just like every cloud you can try and then leave, you can be agile and nimble as a large enterprise using smaller, uh, uh, uh, investments and shorter term investments, and you can act like more of an enterprise as a smaller firm. I think that's a really interesting development. I'm not sure we're there yet, but that was what I started to sense a couple years ago from Oracle.

Well, I guess a turnkey, you know, technology opportunity. So a lot of these companies, they're not having to go to multiple companies to get the technology I put that's in the recurrences, but even if it's more expensive, indirect cost saving, probably make it less expensive. Yes.

Because of all the management that you get with it. Mm-Hmm. Yeah.

Think of autonomous database. Yeah, autonomous database is a perfect example of that. So this is getting Oracle 23 AI without having to manage any of it, and at least, you know, according to the claims, without having to worry about scale, your app blows up or your application blows up or whatever it is.

And you know, yeah, I guess you gonna owe a lot more money to Oracle, but at least you're not worried about the whole service going down. Right. Security is better, right?

So is it more peace of mind, more scalability, more, uh, technology opportunities? So it's more peace of mind is ability to grow with the latest technology. One of the powerhouses in the world.

I was at this concert last night, by the way, and when I checked out at the point of sale, said Oracle Cloud, just interesting. So they're everywhere. You know, they're, they're everywhere.

And it's one of those things, and you're getting in bed with one of the best companies. There is competition, but at the same time, that technology stack is a little bit more important because of the fact that we could have that trigger key that people think, Well, well that's, you know, it, it's interesting if we think about, uh, if you're a customer out there and you're not a, you know, technology vendor, let's say your core business is not any of this stuff. It's sort of like me trying to make the decision whether or not I'm gonna redo the plumbing in my home or call somebody else.

Yeah, it's gonna be a lot more best if they call a plumber. Uh, but on the other hand, when something breaks and it does my fixes a phone call as opposed to tearing out, well, I don't have hair anymore, but whatever it might be. Uh, and, and I think that, yeah, exactly.

But, uh, I think that's where, you know, Oracle and, and by extension, NetSuite is really trying to position themselves saying, look, you know, we are going to handle this. We have this technology, it's scalable. We're trying to be as cutting edge.

It's possible. I think that's why they're really hammering home the, the generative value messaging around features, which again, I think that's all well and good, but ultimately to Robert's point earlier, you know, you need to do the homework first in terms of making sure you have a proper data strategy, it's, you know, ready, available, clean, all that kind of stuff. But I think what Oracle, and that's what you're saying is once you get to that point, you know, we're gonna take care of it from there and make sure that your future proof moving forward.

So, um, I'm just curious, was there anything that kind of stuck out to either of you two that you were surprised about? Obviously we knew about the, you know, normal, uh, conference, dogged pony show stuff, but, uh, you, in terms of product announcements or perhaps something that you haven't heard or, or were expected to hear? I thought that last year's Oracle cloud world was, was whizbang, sorry, I said razzle-dazzle.

I thought it was whizbang. I mean, I couldn't keep up with this new, um, what do they call it? What do they call it?

This new scale cluster or something like that for hosting, uh, uh, uh, for hosting cohere and other ais and stuff. This, I'm talking about last year, um, that last year I think was the Azure announcement. Um, so this year's I was impressed by what a continuation of last year's strategy it was.

And I think we can undersell that by saying, oh, there wasn't anything really big. What struck me was that, um, it's like a, it was just like a great follow through and as an analyst or, or, or, or, or an observer, you want that cool hook, uh, that's not a cool hook, but if anything it's more impressive. So that was what really that and the dancers at the NetSuite, um, the dance show at the NetSuite keynote, uh, this was Vegas.

It was a, it was a perfectly it respectable and beautiful dance show, and it was pretty awesome too, tho those two things, It was still pg, which is pretty impressive. Completely pg Yes, it was more PG than, uh, Cirque de Sole. Well, Robert, what about you?

Anything kind of jump out? It's, You know, I, I agree it's a continuation. Um, but at the same time, I, I felt like, uh, FRA and the CEO, um, I was so trusts was here last year.

I, I didn't think she was as aggressive for some reason. I think every time I hear she is not the same thing negative about her, but I, you know, the customers that she called up absolute wonderful, but at the same time, I didn't hear the way that she was last year this year. Um, I'm not sure if you guys got that vibe.

I, I certainly did. I, I sort of felt that, and again, it's not to pile on her for anything, it's just, I don't know if, uh, I just don't know what it was, but I, I agree with you. I felt like she did not bring the energy or the presence that I would've expected, even in her role.

And honestly, you know, if there was sort of a continuation of what they were doing last year, there had to be something else there to kind of, you know, uh, you know, create this big, you know, Vegas like neon sign. Like, hey, we're still doing some really amazing things, which they are. But I, I sort of got that same impression with her.

Just one more thing. I think some of these conferences I, I know they take a tremendous amount of effort to put on, they're expensive and, you know, it's hard to decide which, um, parts and sessions you want to have. And, but they should be limited to two to three days they go on.

And I think that the people attending them after 48 hours and probably about done would be able to attend a session and get anything out of it. I'm not sure if you guys think that sometimes after two hard days you probably, 'cause everybody does stuff at night. Well, I would say that, uh, yeah, by, by the end of, uh, the last day I was fairly spent, but I was able to make my way to sea journey, which I will say, uh, that was, that was quite, quite entertaining there.

So, uh, wow, glad that I stayed up for that. So Good for you. I did you one better.

I left after the second day because I had somewhere else to be. So I guess I agree with you, You guys are more, Well, every vendor does the same thing, but after a couple days, I think it's, you've maximized have, even know your audience, know your customers know depending, and they just have so much information that it's hard to get it done in such a short period in time. But just, just by 2 cents on that, right?

Well, well, let me kind of echoing that, but if you look at the way that all of these announcements are dropped, and I can't believe I just used that term dropped, but, uh, it was, it's overwhelming when all of them come out at once and you're trying to make sense of it while also, uh, you know, putting it into context. And I think that's where it really is. I, I do wonder sometimes if, if all the sort of messaging that they want to get out around it does sometimes get lost.

Uh, and, and of course the other thing is, uh, I think, uh, you both mentioned here, uh, we had co-located, uh, event with Sweet World and Cloud world. So both coming at the same time, from a logistical point of view, for me it meant one less trip, but on the other hand it was twice as much content to absorb and try to make sense of, which is, you know, kind of what I'm in the process of doing now. Oh, it absolutely is overwhelming and I don't agree at all with the decision to do them both at the same time.

Um, except that I don't know why they made that decision. It may may have been for a very good reason. That's completely, you know, uh, uh, out of my vision.

But, um, from the stand, I don't think there's a whole lot of customer overlap. That's why they wouldn't do that. Um, or maybe why they did do that.

Sorry. Um, but, uh, you're right, it's like twice as much information to try and process and in particular to try and interpret and, uh, help people see, um, the, you know, perspectives from it's, it's overwhelming. Right.

Well, uh, you know, certainly, uh, I I'm glad that we all got to catch up while we're at the event. And, uh, what I'd like to do is close out today's show where I have my segments, uh, Robert's been through this before, but, uh, a guy, if you, you are familiar, I have a segment called Rent or Rave where I ask my guest to pick one thing, and it could be related to, uh, this conference or just in general the market where they either, uh, rave about it, which is said, giving it a big thumbs up or they rant about it. It meaning a big thumbs down.

So, uh, guy, uh, since you're new gear, I'll, I'll let you go first if you'd like. Oh, great. So I don't get to follow someone's example, I just have to wing it myself.

Yes. Well that probably makes it better. Yes.

So, so I'm going to pick a tired subject, but still the shiny subject, which is ai. And I wanna rant about the use of the word productivity against AI and speed, which is a related concept. Um, I'm gonna rant because it is, it is clear to me that the benefit of AI is quality and the benefit of AI is reliability.

Because as long as you don't sit there and say, okay, AI is gonna do some work for me, but think of it as, uh, your, you know, assistant in doing work, then one of the things an assistant can do is put a draft out of something or grab some code for you that is plausible and get you started. And as a world class procrastinator, like myself, it's really helpful to have a buddy who's just gonna spit out some code or spit out some text for me that I can then work on and edit. That's a reliability factor.

People can rely on me, I can rely on myself better. And from a quality standpoint, when you have an extra round of edits or an extra thing that you can do, um, uh, to build on something, sorry, when you can build on something that something else has created for you, then you're reacting and you can observe and you don't have this ownership you have when you are the one who started it all. And so I really think that there needs to be an understanding that all this AI is helping us do things better and do things more reliably.

And if we got off of this silly notion that we're gonna be able to have half as many people to do twice as much work or any of the other sort of stuff, maybe that's what's coming. But to begin with, I'm just tired of hearing the word productivity or speed against ai. So it's, it's a lot of put the cart before the horse essentially.

Well, yeah, because by the way, AI is dumb and it doesn't reason, it's, and I don't care what open AI says, you know, with their latest announcement about strawberry. We're not reasoning, we're simulating reasoning, we're not writing, we're simulating writing, we're not discussing, we're simulating discussion. And once you have that in your mind, you're just like, okay, I don't have to take any of this at face value.

I still need to be an expert. I still need to know what I know how to do and that's how I'm gonna approach it. It's gonna make my work better and it's gonna make me more, more likely to hit deadlines or however you wanna put reliability.

Okay. Awesome. Robert.

Yeah, That was a pretty good, I know how I can follow that, but got piggyback. I, I, I agree with you, but I'm gonna rant a little bit that the, your shop has to be set up or has some responsibility for the companies, um, and to focus not on the features of what AI can do, but the business impact. And there has to be a process in place that has to be transparency to, you know, throughout the company the understanding of what it does and what it can do.

And to have that data demands which structure put in place. But it's kind of a sequence of things. So you have to have the people, you have to have the data, you have to have, make sure that your application know what the results will be with the AI embedded and then what, first of all, what you're actually trying to do and then working your way backwards, you even get it done.

Because if the fact is all these companies are not even sure what AI's gonna do for 'em, but if they don't know, then how are they going to execute? So that changed management process and putting the people in place and owning that responsibility is a big deal because I don't think the companies, they would've pushed the owner the responsibility for the vendor. And, and that's one of the things 'cause in the ERP world, I understand that, you know, 'cause the figure pointing was there, but at the same time, the company didn't set things up properly.

They have to own this, and they have to know what AI's gonna do. If they don't do it, you should suspect failure because it's a big deal. Then on the flip side, you follow everything that you guys have been talking about and you, you execute successful be there.

So it's there. I think the percentage of, uh, AI success is probably 50% or less right now. So I think that's getting high remarks of what Ike view, but it hasn't done it yet, but we're optimistic.

Right. Okay. Interesting take, I'm actually going to, uh, to rave about something, and it is, and honestly has nothing to do with what I've heard at Oracle or NetSuite.

Uh, it was really another vendor conversation I had about generative ai and their approach really was saying, look, we know that, you know, everyone is talking about, oh, we're gonna be having, uh, uh, thousands of agents, uh, basically replacing human workers so forth. And they're saying, no, we're gonna take this a lot slower. 'cause in the reality of the situation, particularly for regulated industries, certain companies, they are not going to be wanting to, uh, you know, go at this at warp speed.

They wanna take a very stepwise approach and say, okay, like Robert was saying, let's figure out, uh, why is it that, you know, when we use AI right now, we still get, uh, duplicates and things like that. Well, because you actually haven't cleaned your data to begin with and you know, why, why is it that people can't see the real value in ai? Well, because you're doing it in such a way where you're, you're almost, uh, uh, abstracting away what's really going on in looking at how the data is actually being, uh, you know, pulled together.

And unless you have that, you're never gonna get that confidence that it's not some magic black box where there's, you know, who knows what's gonna happen. And then obviously there, there are a lot of other things that go into that in strategies for grounding tuning. And we're talking about ultimate business decision makers, you know, often the c-suite.

Um, they're not gonna want to get bogged down on that. They're gonna want to just make sure that they take a very measured approach. And this vendor, um, than I spoke with, I'm not sure they're ready to let me say who they are, but they basically said, well, they're gonna take a much more cautious approach to rolling out features 'cause they believe that that is actually going to yield a greater benefit and actually more trust in them in that vendor as opposed to the ones that are just saying, Hey, we have all these new agents and just trust us and give us a ton of money.

And, you know, you know, we bang here, here are the results Who bang, razzle. There you go. Mean potatoes.

Good callback. Well gentlemen, uh, that's all the time we had today. So, uh, I wanna thank you guy and thank you Robert for joining me here on Enterprise.

Thank you. Yeah, thanks. It was a pleasure.

Alright, well I'll be back again next week with another episode focused in on the happenings within the enterprise application market. So thanks to all of you for tuning in and be sure to subscribe, rate and review this podcast on your preferred platform and we'll see you next time.