Oracle hardsells autonomous cloud offering as it goes after a $331B market
Safra Catz, CEO of Oracle Corp, says the autonomous cloud brings a new level of integration, and enables enterprises and employees to focus on higher value activities.
A day after Oracle Corp Chairman Larry Ellison signalled a technological transformation with his autonomous cloud, Safra Catz, CEO of Oracle Corp, revealed how the new self-driving, integrated product was helping corporations drive business.
Oracle CEO Safra Catz believes that the autonomous database is the most exciting and successful new product offering in the company’s history.
Speaking at Oracle OpenWorld 2019, the American computer corporation’s annual conference held in San Francisco, Safra wasted no time in telling the world that the future rested in an integrated database.
“The future is autonomous and we work with our customers to deliver value,” she said. “The embedded AI allows for better decision making. Oracle cloud has brought a new level of integration and enabled employees to focus on higher value activities. We are centred on the user.”
Safra added that customers were able to transform themselves when they used Oracle because the company was with them through their journey.
Leading the digital transformation
Digital transformation is key to Oracle’s success, and it can happen with integrated clouds and applications. However, the problem is that organisations are yet to tap the power of data.
Oracle believes that by 2022 75 percent of enterprise customers will use infrastructure-as-a-service. Enterprises should find it easy to have a single view of that technology and move information in a seamless way.
Oracle's partnership with Microsoft and VMWare is supposed to simplify this information flow within organisations. Dartmouth College has piloted with Azure and Oracle to manage data flows and enable faster administrative services.
Oracle allows blockchain integration directly in to the database; this involves a blockchain table when rows are inserted and creates a cryptographic chain of data. This blockchain table behaves like a regular table with added security benefits, making it easier for developers to understand data better. Then, a ML learning layer is integrated in the database as and when data is ingested.
“It is dramatically better than having separate systems for different apps and machine learning,” said Andy Mendelsohn, EVP, Oracle Corp.
Focusing on the cloud
Reason enough for Oracle to introduce its clients on what listening to the customer means and what is the power of data and brand building. And why the cloud has gained paramount importance.
Let’s look at Ferrari. The company may make cars, but it sells dreams - and that's the key.
Salvatore Ancoretti, Head of Customer Marketing, Ferrari SPA, said, “A Ferrari customer should be treated the same way across the world. You need to get the same message across all your centres to serve the customer.”
“We are called the pinnacle of excellence. Our founder would not have imagined this,” Salvatore said.
Ferrari produces one car less than what the market wants to maintain exclusivity and brand tradition.
“There is exclusivity, people wait for 24 months to get the car. Very few brands have this. The consistency of the message is key. It is extremely important that every dealership in the world approaches the customer in the same way. Anticipating future wants of the customer is important,” Salvatore said.
Annette Rippert, Senior Managing Director, Technology, North America, Accenture, said huge disruption is taking place.
“You have to focus on innovation, investment, and people to go digital. To be cloud-first and AI is the future. We are living in unprecedented times, with technology changing lives rapidly,” Annette said.
Faster, better, easier
Legacy organisations and institutions are also moving to the cloud.
The West Midlands Police, UK, usually took 11 hours to analyse a threat response as data was available across many databases and instances. Today, after their digital journey, it is available to them in minutes, leading to a better experience for the public.
Data is fundamental to core of any business and even the State of Texas has moved all its agencies to the Oracle ERP. Since then, it has cut costs in half and increased and speeded up services.
Oracle yesterday unveiled an operating system that runs without the need for human oversight, a feature that it claims makes its products more secure than those sold by cloud leader AWS.
“If you eliminate human error in autonomous systems, you eliminate data theft,” CTO Larry Ellison said on stage.
Clearly, Oracle has finally set itself up to take on Google and AWS. But, will customers buy its story of integrated clouds and autonomous databases and data platforms? According to Gartner, the cloud business is worth $249 billion currently and will reach $331 billion in the next three years. Reason enough for Oracle to take that bet.
(Edited by Teja Lele Desai)
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