New age technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), cloud and machine learning, etc. are no longer a buzzword in the C-suite; it has become much more than that. Based on this assumption, Oracle is organizing “Impact for Business – Get Future-ready with Oracle Cloud,” – two mega events in India, one in Mumbai and the other in Delhi, where global Oracle executives, Indian leadership team, and analysts will look into the future of business and technology innovation. The events to be held on September 26 and September 28 in Mumbai and Delhi respectively, will showcase how the company’s customers have entrusted their mission-critical businesses to the Oracle Cloud as it comes embedded with emerging technologies like AI, Chatbots and IoT.
Speaking ahead of the event, Prasad Rai, Vice President, Applications, Oracle India informed CXOToday that emerging technologies like AI, Automation and Blockchain are disrupting this journey like never before. These technologies have triggered strong stimulation and are driving discussions across the board. Disruptions from organisations such as Uber/Grab, AirBnB, as well as the expectations from the future workforce has impacted businesses and provided the catalyst for them to transform and be future-ready.”
“The purpose of this event is to showcase how all these innovations are embedded in our cloud offerings so there is no need to purchase any additional solutions and how we differentiate ourselves from competitors. The other purpose is to show how organizations can be future-ready and make an impact for their business by moving to the cloud with us, and to expand their footprint with us,” he added.
Quoting figures from Gartner, Rai said that the SaaS business has grown at the rate of 33% y-o-y in 2017, which is a high rate for such a large business. Customers all over the world are watching this space very keenly. “From an Oracle perspective, we are leading in the space from our product development strategy as well as from our go to market strategy.”
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“We have been focusing on SaaS for quite a few years as we believe that SaaS will meet burgeoning customer expectations in India as well as globally. Over the last few years, we have witnessed the shift in customer mindset primarily because of the benefits that some of the early starters have managed to achieve by implementing and rolling out SaaS based applications,” said Rai. He believes that initially, customers used to have apprehensions about SaaS solutions, but today organizations across sectors are open to consider business applications to meet their business expectations.
According to PwC, AI will add $15 trillion to the global economy by 2030. In terms of development, we predict that, by 2019, cognitive computing, artificial intelligence, and machine learning will become the fastest-growing segments of software development; by 2021, 90 percent of enterprises’ own development teams will be using cognitive/AI and machine learning tools and services. Needless to say, Oracle is focussed on AI enabled applications and building AI into its cloud platform around security, systems management and database management to name a few.
“We are witnessing organisations taking a piecemeal approach to technology adoption as they are yet to have holistic cloud and data strategies in place. For this, we are embedding Machine learning and AI in our applications on an on-going basis,” said Rai.
He believes that applications with right algorithm and machine learning can come up with insights that can help organisations to take business decisions. Chatbots will be one of the key technologies that will be found on every organisation’s strategic customer experience (CX) roadmap, he said.
The Oracle event will include keynote address by Steve Cox – Group Vice President, Oracle ERP and EPM Product Marketing on the topic of “The Promise of Transformational Technology”. The event will also have various sessions where thought leaders will talk about how emerging technologies are enabling organizations to pull down all the silos between various functions of the organizations and work as connected business.
Speaking about the customer participation at the event, Rai said, “We are committed to making our customers future ready. Our customers, enabled with emerging technologies, are delivering innovative products and services to their customers. Our SaaS solutions are at the helm of some of the largest and mission critical business transformations in the country today be it Airtel- the largest telecom service provider using our Cloud HCM and ERP solutions.”
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Giving other examples, he informed that Transworld has embarked upon the journey of complete digital transformation with Oracle ERP cloud solutions. Also, Reliance Healthcare Technologies has been able to reduce the time they were spending on making reports. Their dependence on hardware has gone down by 30-40% post implementation of Oracle ERP cloud. Another example he gave was that of SRF Limited that has opted for the Oracle Learn Cloud Service, a comprehensive solution for delivering, tracking, managing, and reporting on all types of formal and informal learning.
“Cloud coupled with AI delivers greater value to businesses. Our customers are in the process of achieving agility that cloud has to offer with exceptional intelligence, which further accelerates innovation, provides insights with reduced risk, and lowers costs due to automation of the mundane tasks. Combined these forceful technologies are paving way for enterprise productivity, innovation, exceptional customer services and operational excellence. We are helping them transform, innovate and succeed in the cloud,” summed up Rai.