Oracle DatabaseWorld at CloudWorld 2023 – It’s a wrap!

So it’s been a few weeks since we wrapped up our inaugural Oracle DatabaseWorld at CloudWorld in Vegas, and I’m still working through the long list of follow-ups from all of the customer and partner meetings I had. In addition, the product announcements we made at the event have piqued the interest of industry analysts and media, resulting in requests for briefings and article reviews – more items to add to my to-do list. Don’t get me wrong - I’m not complaining! As a product manager, I welcome this level of interest and attention to products under my care. What did we announce and showcase at the event that engendered such excitement, you ask?

Well, first off, we delivered many sessions about data management and Generative AI, including our “Future of Data & App Dev” mainstage keynote by Juan Loaiza, EVP Mission-Critical Database Technologies. Juan talked about adopting a “Generate to Innovate” strategy and explained how this strategy could be applied by various types of technologists, from DBAs to developers. He said, “What happens if we add semantic search to relational data, then add Generative AI on top of that? Then things get even more interesting.” Granted, add “GenAI” to anything these days, and you’re guaranteed to gain eyeballs and ears on whatever you want to communicate. However, our product roadmap and holistic view of using GenAI as a technology to dramatically improve productivity, increase customer satisfaction, and catalyze innovation have captured our customers’ imaginations.

Our product demos showing how our new data management technologies help our customers realize GenAI benefits have also resonated with even the most discerning and experienced industry analysts, as exemplified in The Register article published right after CloudWorld. In the article, several analysts commented on the importance of vector processing, and pointed out the fact that it will become a de facto requirement in all databases. They applaud Oracle Database's converged database approach as a more effective strategy to unleash the potential of combining business data, stored in a variety of data models in Oracle Database, with vector search as we are continuing this proven approach by adding AI Vector Search into Oracle Database 23c.

Speaking of Oracle Database 23c, sessions about our next long-term support release drew large crowds, no big surprise. In fact, the most popular Oracle Database 23c session was about upgrading to it. Also, at the conclusion of my session, multiple customers from a variety of industries indicated to me that they can’t wait to adopt Oracle Database 23c. A couple of people even asked if I could speed up its release timeframe, to which I reminded them that we just shipped Oracle Database 23c on OCI Base Database Service, one of our main announcements at CloudWorld!

For any of you reading this post who did not attend DatabaseWorld at CloudWorld or missed this session, please check out the Oracle Database Directions solution keynote that Andy Mendelsohn, EVP of Oracle Database Server Technologies, presented to a packed room (apologies to the people who were turned away due to fire marshal regulations). Andy shared the latest product news and innovations from our data management development organization, including the new Select AI natural language to SQL code generator in Oracle Autonomous Database, Oracle Exadata X10M, and others. Also, you’ll get to watch two very cool demos delivered during the session, one showcasing the low-code ELT tool suite called Data Studio which comes with Oracle Autonomous Database, and another demonstrating the upcoming Oracle APEX Assistant which takes natural language and generates SQL code and application blueprints. You can watch GenAI in action!

Now back to my to-do list, and I hope to see you at next year’s DatabaseWorld at CloudWorld.