• Home
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Special Offers
Business Intelligence Info
  • Business Intelligence
    • BI News and Info
    • Big Data
    • Mobile and Cloud
    • Self-Service BI
  • CRM
    • CRM News and Info
    • InfusionSoft
    • Microsoft Dynamics CRM
    • NetSuite
    • OnContact
    • Salesforce
    • Workbooks
  • Data Mining
    • Pentaho
    • Sisense
    • Tableau
    • TIBCO Spotfire
  • Data Warehousing
    • DWH News and Info
    • IBM DB2
    • Microsoft SQL Server
    • Oracle
    • Teradata
  • Predictive Analytics
    • FICO
    • KNIME
    • Mathematica
    • Matlab
    • Minitab
    • RapidMiner
    • Revolution
    • SAP
    • SAS/SPSS
  • Humor

OpenWorld Preview

October 17, 2018   CRM News and Info

As of this writing, I haven’t been prebriefed on what Oracle will be announcing at OpenWorld regarding CRM — or as it refers to it, “CX” — so this is a good time to express my own opinions.

Oracle’s direction in the last few years increasingly has been toward cloud computing and the autonomous database, and each has several flavors or divisions. The company has three levels of cloud — infrastructure, platform and apps. Also, it has been automating most aspects of database operation and security, using analytics and machine learning. The same goes for security and apps in general.

With CX, HCM, SCM, PLM, ERP and other apps, Oracle is too big for one person to cover, except when there are overlaps. For instance, you must know something about databases, security, and the cloud approach just to get in the metaphorical door to write about customer experience, or CX. It’s quite a task and requires a good deal of experience for analysts and reporters, which explains all the gray hair in our ranks.

Oracle has been taking heat from investors over what’s perceived as the slow transition of the customer base to the cloud, so that’s another factor. No matter how many times the company says the conversion is a process that will take a decade or more, financial analysts declare the sky is falling because revenues are not keeping up with expectations. Ahhh, the joys of being a public company!

CX and Other Apps

Customer experience is the primary driver of this piece, but you can’t ignore the back office and all that enterprise resource planning and financials stuff. I’m looking for a theme of embedding more artificial intelligence and machine learning in both front and back offices.

Virtually any business process can be enhanced by new intelligent apps, and I expect there will be talk about both in sales, marketing and service. There will be more to say about bots and specific use cases in industries too.

Also, I look for an announcement regarding blockchain — especially in the back office. After the year that cryptocurrency has had, it’s obvious that blockchain needs a new place to play. In my opinion, it’s the technology that will survive long after crypto investors are all broke.

Blockchain has a lot to offer any process that has a hint of supply chain in it, which goes from manufacturing to sales and service, and probably the Internet of Things.

Oracle currently has analogous apps for both on-premises and in the cloud, and it will be seeking ways to differentiate its cloud products and highlight their desirability. That won’t be hard, because cloud apps are supported by a newer platform and offer better configurability.

For customers that already own and operate an on-premises solutions, however, the cost benefit analysis will loom large. For them, Oracle’s Bring Your Own License (BYOL) program continues to have a lot of appeal.

It’s also a revenue generator. That said, it possibly could retard migration, which the finance department will examine carefully. BYOL has made a lot of progress since its introduction more than a year ago, and I look for more streamlining in the program.

BYOL simply means porting your existing license to the Oracle Infrastructure Cloud. The program may have been hampered by Oracle’s need to build out cloud data centers, though. The company has been building feverishly and will have several new cloud data centers to report on. With that capacity, it will do everything it can to encourage customers to move their apps or convert to newer cloud apps.

The company also has been making waves in vertical apps. Historically, this has meant investments in verticals like manufacturing, finance and banking, government and healthcare. Look for some announcements around road maps for verticals, because there’s always more to do there.

Autonomous DB

The drive to deliver the autonomous database has several components, including embedding AI and machine learning in database operations to make them automatic, as well as to reduce labor and costs. Currently, the new database can deliver all its benefits only if it’s running on Oracle hardware, which puts virtually all of the database in memory to make it lightning fast.

While insisting on Oracle gear is understandable from a performance perspective, some customers have taken issue with the vertical integration. You can’t get the same performance on other clouds, like Amazon Web Services (AWS) for instance, and that’s a key marketing differentiator for Oracle.

Oracle also has been playing catch-up to other infrastructure vendors, so this aspect has a downside: Customers may elect to run some workloads elsewhere. The issue reportedly has been a bone of contention between senior Oracle management and Thomas Kurian, who likely will sit out this OpenWorld. However, we could see some softening of the Oracle line there. Stay tuned.

Security in the Mix

When Larry Ellison introduced the autonomous DB last year, he said that the AI and machine learning aspects also would benefit Oracle security, to help identify and isolate intrusions. He also said that the self-patching nature of the DB would be a boon to security, as that would make it possible to apply patches as they became available to customers, rather than having them wait — in many cases for months — before finding time to implement them.

It’s possible there will be refinements to these ideas now that the customer base has had a year to begin adopting the product. They might still require some Oracle hardware, but the enterprise customers these products are targeting are also the ones adopting the hardware.

It’s the middle market and small enterprise customers we need to think about. For them, Oracle has mounted a strong campaign to get them to the Oracle DB Cloud, where all of the gear already exists and they can access it for a monthly payment. All of this brings us back to questions of migration and upgrade. In that regard, OpenWorld will be like solving Rubik’s Cube.

My Two Bits

This is just scratching the surface. Oracle also has a day devoted to NetSuite, which many analysts will cover. NetSuite’s existence shows how important the middle market is to Oracle as it tries to sink deep roots into the cloud industry.

There is no doubt that Oracle is still behind in some aspects of the cloud, given its late start. Equally apparent are the company’s strengths in areas like the DB, which is a de facto standard in much of the cloud industry.

Oracle always has been aggressive, and I think the upcoming OpenWorld likely will show that the company is fully activated to take a leading position in the cloud. The only things missing at this point might be products and new customers, and that’s why Oracle holds the conference in the first place.
end enn OpenWorld Preview


Denis%20Pombriant OpenWorld Preview
Denis Pombriant is a well-known CRM industry analyst, strategist, writer and speaker. His new book, You Can’t Buy Customer Loyalty, But You Can Earn It, is now available on Amazon. His 2015 book, Solve for the Customer, is also available there.
Email Denis.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

CRM Buyer

OpenWorld, Preview
  • Recent Posts

    • NOT WHAT THEY MEANT BY “BUILDING ON THE BACKS OF….”
    • Why Healthcare Needs New Data and Analytics Solutions Before the Next Pandemic
    • Siemens and IBM extend alliance to IoT for manufacturing
    • Kevin Hart Joins John Hamburg For New Netflix Comedy Film Titled ‘Me Time’
    • Who is Monitoring your Microsoft Dynamics 365 Apps?
  • Categories

  • Archives

    • February 2021
    • January 2021
    • December 2020
    • November 2020
    • October 2020
    • September 2020
    • August 2020
    • July 2020
    • June 2020
    • May 2020
    • April 2020
    • March 2020
    • February 2020
    • January 2020
    • December 2019
    • November 2019
    • October 2019
    • September 2019
    • August 2019
    • July 2019
    • June 2019
    • May 2019
    • April 2019
    • March 2019
    • February 2019
    • January 2019
    • December 2018
    • November 2018
    • October 2018
    • September 2018
    • August 2018
    • July 2018
    • June 2018
    • May 2018
    • April 2018
    • March 2018
    • February 2018
    • January 2018
    • December 2017
    • November 2017
    • October 2017
    • September 2017
    • August 2017
    • July 2017
    • June 2017
    • May 2017
    • April 2017
    • March 2017
    • February 2017
    • January 2017
    • December 2016
    • November 2016
    • October 2016
    • September 2016
    • August 2016
    • July 2016
    • June 2016
    • May 2016
    • April 2016
    • March 2016
    • February 2016
    • January 2016
    • December 2015
    • November 2015
    • October 2015
    • September 2015
    • August 2015
    • July 2015
    • June 2015
    • May 2015
    • April 2015
    • March 2015
    • February 2015
    • January 2015
    • December 2014
    • November 2014
© 2021 Business Intelligence Info
Power BI Training | G Com Solutions Limited