Chris Murphy, Oracle BRANDVOICE Brand Contributor, wrote in Forbes about the historical context that Larry Ellison, Oracle Chairman and CTO, provided around the company’s latest technology breakthrough – Oracle Autonomous Database. Ellison went all the way back to Oracle’s origin 40 years ago, to its introduction of the world’s first commercial relational database, to find a comparable technology shift.

“That turned this company from an idea to the company that manages most of the world’s information, so I would say Autonomous Database is that same kind of thing.”

-Larry Ellison, Oracle

Oracle Autonomous Database: The Newest Breakthrough

The technology leap this time is that the cloud-based Oracle Autonomous Database is self-driving. It takes care of previously manual, error-prone tasks such as system patching, updating, securing, configuring, and tuning, all without downtime and human intervention.

“It’s so different, so much safer to use, so much more reliable than anything else that’s in the market. I think everyone is going to use it—virtually everyone is going to use it.”

-Larry Ellison, Oracle

Ellison acknowledged it will take some time for organizations to test and get comfortable with this next-generation technology, which Oracle launched in 2018. However, thousands of customers already use Oracle Autonomous Database, and the existing Oracle Database is the foundation for Oracle Autonomous Database, making it easy for customers to shift existing workloads to it.

Ellison described Oracle’s strategy for selling its self-driving database as “land and expand.” It’s focused on starting with small deals, confident that organizations will want more capacity once they see the autonomous database’s performance, security, and cost advantages. Additionally, since it’s cloud-based infrastructure, companies can add capacity on demand. Ellison feels that the best selling technique for Autonomous Database is simply “try it.”

Oracle CEO Safra Catz noted a related technology milestone this past quarter – the first deployment of technology that allows Oracle’s Gen 2 Cloud Database Infrastructure to run inside a company’s own data center. That control is important to companies in highly regulated industries such as banking, pharmaceuticals, and government.

Oracle’s Gen 2 Exadata Cloud at Customer infrastructure was fully deployed and operating in the customer’s data center in just four days, and Oracle expects future deployments will happen even faster.

“No other cloud provider has the right technology to actually do this.”

-Safra Catz, Oracle

Overall, Oracle announced that its fiscal 2020 second-quarter operating income rose 3 percent from the year-earlier quarter to $3.2 billion, on 1 percent higher revenue of $9.6 billion. The company’s cloud services and license support revenues totaled $6.8 billion in the quarter, while its cloud license and on-premises license revenues totaled $1.1 billion.

Cloud ERP: The Other Pillar

Ellison reiterated that there are two products that will determine the company’s future – its autonomous database and its cloud-based ERP applications.

Oracle’s two cloud ERP suites, which manage customers’ financial processes, is the more established product group, with more than 7,000 customers for Oracle ERP Cloud and more than 20,000 customers for Oracle NetSuite. Oracle Fusion ERP revenues grew 37 percent and NetSuite ERP revenues grew 29 percent in the quarter compared with a year ago.

“We are very, very comfortable that we will be the overwhelming winner in this generation cloud ERP business.”

-Larry Ellison, Oracle

In addition, the company increasingly sees customers that buy Oracle ERP Cloud also buy Oracle Human Capital Management Cloud for their HR needs. Ellison explained that Oracle is beginning to see that same integrated suite strategy beginning to drive sales of CX (customer experience) applications in sales and service and in marketing.

Catz explained that companies that once took a wait-and-see approach on whether to move their on-premises ERP applications to the cloud now have the confidence to follow through.

“What happens in our business is that once you are sort of obviously reference-able, it becomes much, much easier for other potential customers to move ahead, and so for us, this is going to be success leads to more success. It’s an incredibly virtuous circle.”

-Safra Catz, Oracle