'Oracle Was Little Late To Cloud Game'

'We realised that locking customers to our Cloud was not fair to them.'

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), the data management giant's Cloud services platform, grew 50 per cent in the June-November 2024 period in India, with artificial intelligence (AI) solutions-led wins contributing to roughly 30 per cent of bookings during the period.

Mahesh Thiagarajan, executive vice-president of software development at OCI and the person responsible for Oracle's multi-Cloud strategy, in an interview with Shivani Shinde/Business Standard on the sidelines of the Oracle CloudWorld Tour in Mumbai, talks about the Indian market, Cloud adoption, generative AI (GenAI), and the importance of India.

How has India's Cloud adoption or technology trend evolved over the past five/six years?

Fundamentally, the Indian market has evolved significantly over the past five years.

The notion of leveraging the latest and best technology to bring new products to market has grown stronger.

The number of home-grown firms is much higher here, leading to a greater level of innovation in the Indian tech industry.

This is a huge difference compared to other markets in Asia.

Another key trend is the rapid adoption of technology.

India has a large number of startups and digital-native companies, and many of them are doing cutting-edge work in agriculture, retail, and payments.

Even long-standing Oracle customers -- such as banks and conglomerates -- are adopting technology faster than ever before.

Of course, cost remains a pressure point, but discussions now focus on cost optimisation relative to value rather than just reducing expenses.

Oracle had to play catch-up when it came to Cloud. How has that evolved in India and in general?

As technology continues to evolve, the ease with which data moves between systems is improving.

Hence, the accidental movement of data is high, and the regulations being enforced by regulators, including the Reserve Bank of India, are in the right direction. This ensures that citizens' data is protected.

We saw this shift much earlier and had the opportunity to observe it because most mission-critical businesses use the Oracle database.

This is why our dedicated Cloud product strategy has done well.

Oracle was also a little late to the Cloud game, and we had to play catch-up.

We also realised that locking customers to our Cloud was not fair to them.

We made our high-quality products work with any Cloud platform. This approach has resonated very well in India.

A lot of customers like our story, and for most who do a proof of concept, the conversion rate is very high.

Several reports suggest that very few companies have managed to get results from GenAI adoption. One reason is, of course, the availability of data. How do you see that changing this year?

First, the evolution that I wanted to see or expected to see in GenAI is a year ahead.

This also means companies will have to take bold risks, which may require some of them to burn a little more cash now.

Maybe the number of businesses taking bold risks is small at the moment, but this will increase over the next 12 months.

Those taking bets are already seeing the value -- their revenue curves are rising. So, many will follow.

How do you see the emergence of new AI models, and how does it impact adoption?

The large models will remain few and far between because the computing power required, even with DeepSeek, is still very high.

Very few players can afford it. However, I do expect more models to emerge that are tailor-made, more specific, and designed for industry verticals.

These will be fundamental foundational models but customised for specific industry needs.

This space will evolve, and many firms will introduce agentic experiences.

What has been the impact of AI on your hiring plans? We hear from product firms that the need to hire more engineers is decreasing.

Our productivity has gone up, but our actual hiring numbers have not gone down. We are hiring more.

I have not formally assessed this impact, but GenAI is being widely used in code assistance by employees, reducing time spent on tasks and having a massive impact on productivity.

Things are getting done faster. I see this as an acceleration to accomplish tasks more efficiently.

Oracle has close to 52,000 employees in India. How significant has their contribution been?

We have a huge presence in Bengaluru. In my team, close to 1,000 people are based here.

The total number of employees in India is substantial across all our product offerings.

My team is growing in India, and it's a huge bet for us.

Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com