How Oracle Became the Backbone of Enterprise AI with Chris Chelliah

Fresh out of Oracle AI World 2025, Chris Chelliah, Senior Vice President of Technology and Customer Strategy for Japan and Asia Pacific at Oracle, joins us to unpack how Oracle is positioning itself as the definitive enterprise AI platform across the region. He shares his career journey from a computer science geek working on distributed databases to leading technology strategy across a market representing two-thirds of the world's population. Chris explains Oracle's comprehensive four-tier AI stack—infrastructure, data platform, applications, and agentic orchestration—emphasizing how this unique full-stack ownership enables enterprises to consume AI out of the box and extend seamlessly without ripping and replacing existing systems. He highlights compelling use cases from financial fraud detection and healthcare automation to precision agriculture and energy grid optimization. Closing the conversation, Chris shares his vision for what great Oracle will look like in Asia Pacific, continuing its 50-year legacy as the behind-the-scenes platform provider powering everything from OpenAI and TikTok to global banking infrastructure.

What's been consistent for Oracle is to be a platform provider that helps organizations unlock full value of their data. Today it is all about AI and unlocking the value of your data in AI, and cloud is a mandatory enabler. With AI and agentic AI, an agent is effectively an employee—it's an automated employee, a process, a workflow. You want your employees to be within your ecosystem, within your firewall. AI thrives at the edge because that's where inference happens. With AI and agentic AI, an agent is effectively an employee—it's an automated employee, a process, a workflow. You want your employees to be within your ecosystem, within your firewall. AI thrives at the edge because that's where inference happens. - Chris Chelliah

Profile: Chris Chelliah, Senior Vice President of Technology and Customer Strategy for Japan and Asia Pacific at Oracle https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrischelliah/

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the day by Chris Chelliah
[02:10] Chris's journey from computer science to enterprise tech
[03:13] Technology tinkering and Oracle's innovation culture explained
[04:17] Two-thirds world population drives APJ market potential
[05:06] Career advice: Find passion, own your brand
[06:54] Oracle's mission: Unlocking data value for enterprises
[07:58] 47,000 customers, 44% yearly consumption growth in JPAC
[08:51] Oracle AI World 2025: AI changes everything announcement
[09:12] Four-tier stack: Infrastructure, data, applications, agents
[11:25] AI Data Platform enables production-grade AI systems
[14:14] AI Agent Studio and Marketplace solve scaling challenges
[15:12] Agents as higher-level abstraction for enterprise automation
[16:27] Real-world AI use cases across industries shared
[18:49] Multi-cloud strategy accelerates enterprise AI adoption
[21:16] Partners enable scale with 100 marketplace solutions
[23:01] Convergent AI: Consume applications then extend capabilities
[26:51] Multi-cloud and multi-model future requires strong governance
[27:31] Four-tier security isolation from infrastructure to applications
[29:57] AI agents need enterprise-level data residency controls
[31:02] Using AI to accelerate cloud migration skills
[[33:08] Design thinking to working prototype in days
[36:10] Success metrics: Beat your personal best daily
[39:55] Why Oracle differs: Only four-tier stack player
[43:01] What great looks like for Oracle in the Asia Pacific
[45:51] Closing

Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. The proper credits for the intro and end music are "Energetic Sports Drive." G. Thomas Craig mixed and edited the episode in both video and audio format.