Oracle CloudWorld keynote: CEO Catz, customers showcase AI and cloud adoption

Oracle’s customers are adding AI capabilities to pare costs, help with regulatory compliance, identify fraud, and ward off cyberthreats, CEO Safra Catz told a packed audience at Oracle CloudWorld.

Several customers joined Catz on stage during her September 10 keynote address, a day after the company reported strong results in its cloud computing business. BNP Paribas executives said the French bank is using AI models on Oracle’s Exadata private cloud to shore up cybersecurity, help comply with data sovereignty requirements, and root out financial crime as the bank expands its operations in North America. The CEO of hotel and casino operator MGM Resorts International said the company is using AI to triage tens of thousands of phone calls daily so that it can focus on paying customers. And the US Central Intelligence Agency is looking to AI models to summarize reams of raw data, help with language translation, and automate supply chain operations.

“You always know that the technology we build isn’t like everyone else’s,” Catz said, alluding to the performance and security strengths of Oracle’s cloud infrastructure and applications. “Not everyone was betting on Oracle to cross the chasm and be such a leader in the cloud.”

In fact, 47 years after the company’s founding, Oracle is striking technology partnerships with competitors to let customers run enterprise workloads across multiple clouds. It’s making Oracle Autonomous Database on dedicated infrastructure and Oracle Exadata Database Service running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) available within AWS through a service called Oracle Database@AWS. That partnership, along with prior cloud infrastructure collaborations with Microsoft and Google, lets customers build and deploy AI and other applications that combine Oracle’s widely used database software with cloud and AI services from those other technology companies.

Oracle has been working with customers to reduce their IT costs and bolster their competitiveness by moving their core computing work to public and private versions of Oracle Cloud. With OCI, Oracle promises to help customers cut costs via lower network latency and faster processing, consuming fewer IT resources than other hyperscalers and legacy on-premises systems.

It's an offer that’s increasingly resonating with customers. Oracle on September 9 reported that its first-quarter cloud infrastructure revenue rose 46% compared with the previous quarter, excluding currency fluctuations.

“Mix and match”

Also joining Catz on stage at Oracle CloudWorld was Michelle Zatlyn, co-founder and president of Cloudflare, a provider of website performance and cybersecurity services. Zatlyn said businesses are turning to OCI because of its interoperability with other clouds. “Today you want to mix and match the best features depending on the cloud provider,” she said.

Cloudflare, which operates in 330 cities worldwide, is working with Oracle to offer its customers AI inference services, which let the large language models used in generative AI execute commands as they’re interacting with users on servers when a phone or laptop isn’t powerful enough. “There are going to be certain things where there's not quite enough space on the phone or the device to do it,” Zatlyn said. “You need another place.”

Given the potential of AI-infused cloud infrastructure and applications to help organizations land new customers, forecast financial results, manage complex supply chains, and improve a range of other processes, executives should push AI adoption instead of being “afraid of it,” Catz said during her keynote.

Generative AI, which can spot hidden patterns in large amounts of data, summarize text, and power natural language chatbots, promises to help companies seize growth opportunities while keeping costs in check.

BNP Paribas has been moving its databases and the workloads that run on them to Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer, an arrangement in which Oracle manages the machines running on the bank’s premises. That migration is part of a broader set of efficiency initiatives aimed at saving the bank €1 billion this year and €2.7 billion by 2025.

Managing its data in the Oracle Cloud is helping the bank “to realize our aspirations to become the lead bank for corporates in North America” by speeding time to market and helping with US and European compliance, said Jean-Yves Fillion, vice chairman of BNP Paribas USA.

The bank now runs more than 750 AI-powered processes, including those for corporate payments, compliance, anti-money laundering, and information security. “What is today challenging for everyone is to scale up their solutions and find the right use cases,” CIO Bernard Gavgani said.

The CIA, which was Oracle’s first customer in 1977, is working with Oracle to deploy generative AI in support of its intelligence missions, help automate logistics and supply chain processes, and assist with HR functions, said CIO La’Naia Jones during the onstage discussion with Catz. It’s also turning to the technology to interpret “vast amounts of raw data” faster and help with translations, Jones said.

No peak

Las Vegas-based MGM Resorts International gets 15,000 to 20,000 calls a day inquiring about bookings, but just 20% convert to sales, President and CEO Bill Hornbuckle told Catz and the Oracle CloudWorld audience. For the other 80%, “we are leaning more and more into AI taking on that responsibility,” he said.

MGM Resorts now checks in 35% of guests via their phones using Oracle OPERA Cloud Property Management software, thinning front desk lines. Eventually, MGM wants to be able to automatically book hotel stays, dining, and entertainment for its preferred guests, as the city adds more professional sports, theater, concerts, and other attractions, Hornbuckle said. “The question is, has Las Vegas reached its peak? The answer is, hell no,” he said.

Telco Entel, with more than 20 million mobile subscribers in Chile and Peru, is moving 90% of its application software to OCI, reducing application costs by 35%. It’s also halved its IT infrastructure total cost of ownership by moving 90% of cloud computing work to OCI.

Entel CEO Antonio Büchi Buc told Catz and the CloudWorld audience that the migration has helped the telco win revenue share from larger competitors and improve its profit margin. The company, founded to expand Chile’s telephone network after a giant 1960 earthquake, has been expanding revenue and profit and adding subscribers despite restructuring costs and strong competition.

Entel is pressing its IT advantage to compete, pushing for business users at the company without technical backgrounds to embrace AI. “If you don’t push changes,” he said, “changes will push you, and you’ll become a laggard.”

View more Oracle Connect articles

Future Product Disclaimer
The preceding is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, timing, and pricing of any features or functionality described for Oracle’s products may change and remains at the sole discretion of Oracle Corporation.

Forward-Looking Statements Disclaimer
Statements in this article relating to Oracle’s future plans, expectations, beliefs, and intentions are “forward-looking statements” and are subject to material risks and uncertainties. Many factors could affect Oracle’s current expectations and actual results, and could cause actual results to differ materially. A discussion of such factors and other risks that affect Oracle’s business is contained in Oracle’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, including Oracle’s most recent reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q under the heading “Risk Factors.” These filings are available on the SEC’s website or on Oracle’s website at http://www.oracle.com/investor. All information in this article is current as of September 11, 2024 and Oracle undertakes no duty to update any statement in light of new information or future events.