As a 135,000-person company that’s been working on the cloud for more 10 years, Oracle is going through an evolution, not a revolution, according to Reggie Bradford, SVP of Product Development at Oracle.

“The sense of urgency is palpable and continues to accelerate. We have a strong hand and we’ll continue to play that,” Bradford told John Furrier (@furrier) and Peter Burris (@plburris), hosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during. Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco, CA. That included in that strong hand are the capabilities to continue changing within the market and developing solutions for its problems, he said.

From a business model standpoint, the underpinnings of these new capabilities – whether AI, Internet of Things, or machine learning – are best leveraged with external third-party data that is easy to integrate and use, Bradford explained.

Oracle also doesn’t define a set path for its customers so as to be flexible to the individual needs of each company. Because it has so many products that cover so much ground, it can be challenging at first, but precisely because the company can offer that diversity, it can also have much more flexibility than other platforms, according to Bradford. And this works not just for large enterprises.

“We are working with companies that have one or two employees. We’re open to everyone,” Bradford said, emphasizing Oracle’s ability to scale down and work with smaller companies.

Own your niche

When asked for advice to entrepreneurs today, Bradford had simple but strong wisdom to give. “Find a big, addressable opportunity that market isn’t covering – then focus on it,” he said.

Too many people try to be the “one-size-fits-all” company and cover so much ground that they never excel at any of it, he explained, adding that it’s far better to own your niche and become the top expert for it.

Bradford continued to explain, saying that it’s much easier for a larger company to acquire a smaller company that is excellent in their field rather than train people to try to compete with them. “And you know, over half of Oracle’s employees have come through acquisitions,” he added.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Oracle OpenWorld.

(* Disclosure: Oracle and other companies sponsor some OpenWorld segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither Oracle nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo by SiliconANGLE