Among the attendees of the Oracle CloudWorld 2016 event in D.C. are enterprises and customers both old and new, all of them looking to find out the latest in how Oracle is upgrading and deploying its cloud services to enhance business operability.

One of the attendees whose history with Oracle goes back in time is Aaron De Los Reyes, senior director of products at Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp.. He met with John Furrier and Dave Vellante, cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, to talk about how cloud dynamics are changing, what this means for businesses, and how clients can work to keep themselves ahead of the curve.

Building operational DNA

As mentioned by de los Reyes, “Cognizant and Oracle’s relationship goes back almost 15 years,” and by this point, “it’s a very advanced and sophisticated … interlock” between the two groups. With leveraging of Oracle products “both internally and from a practices perspective,” Cognizant has found its services instrumental in building its digital 20/20 service, which aims to apply modernization and practice compounding across entire businesses, thereby improving their operational efficiency.

de los Reyes sees the move toward digitization as a game-changer for big enterprises, not only in the tech field, but for any group looking to make it into (or stay in) the Fortune 500. In particular, it’s helping to address some of the geographical implications of working as a global entity while maintaining communications and unified practices, to the point where de los Reyes characterized a model of moving past the ecosystem to operational DNA.

New practices through clouds

de los Reyes also pointed out how far the utilization of cloud services has come. “In the original cloud days, it was really structured as compute capabilities … I would argue now we’re into the ‘dev-cloud days,’” he said. He expects to see cloud development lifecycles emerge in the near future, speeding up revision and deployment as enterprises leverage services to their customers, who then leverage them in new ways themselves to serve their respective customers.

As de los Reyes noted, this will not be an easy progression. “To be honest, [customers] need to reimagine all of their [services and strategies as] one single approach,” he said, noting, “IT isn’t going to be providing a lot of value if the business isn’t central to their [usage].”

“What [Cognizant is] able to do is guide a client through this journey [of restructuring],” he explained, pointing to the ways in which roles and positions that were formerly separated are being compressed to join their aims for client services.

Regulations and control

“If you look at the large enterprise environments … they have a certain regulatory environment, and the traditional cloud-integration approach … really hasn’t worked,” said de los Reyes, “[but] the cloud machine on-prem for the largest enterprises … allows them to have that control and meet regulatory needs.”

While the separation of DevOps, operational models and other factors formed a barrier to the evolution of the private cloud, de los Reyes felt that such a block had largely been passed by this time, as modernization has led to “enormous capacity if you move to the cloud.” At the same time, “most clients are going to get stuck making the move,” he said.

For all of the challenges facing cloud adopters, and the companies that seek to lead their clients through the process of doing so, de los Reyes was enormously optimistic in looking to the future of these services, as well as the Oracle CloudWorld events. “This is really one of the more exciting events. … All of the cloud capability brought together under one roof … and it’s fully engaged.”

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Oracle CloudWorld 2016. And make sure to weigh in during theCUBE’s live coverage at the event by joining in on CrowdChat.

Photo by SiliconANGLE