The digital world in which we live in is creating data at a phenomenal rate. This colossal volumes of data poses many challenges. Companies like Oracle believes that instead of building expensive data warehouses, companies can now start uploading their data directly on the cloud. The tech titan’s Autonomous Database has been deployed to take over intelligence, using artificial intelligence [AI] and machine learning [ML] to deliver highly elastic data management, so that organizations can seek newer business avenues and add value to the enterprise. In a recent conversation with CXOToday, Ravi Pinto, Director- Product Management, Oracle Cloud Platform, explained the pace at which automation is happening and how Oracle’s Autonomous Database can be the next big thing in the Indian market.
Starting by explaining how Oracle is no more just a database company, Pinto highlighted its SAAS offerings, applications, platforms services with his elaborated views on the evolving technologies and its future.
Evolving technologies
According to the global research firm MarketsandMarkets, the blockchain market size is expected to grow from USD 411.5 Million in 2017 to USD 7,683.7 Million by 2022 with the key factors owed to reduced total cost of ownership, faster transactions, simplified business process with transparency and immutability. With this data, Pinto shared how they are trying to understand the key elements of blockchain technology as used in Bitcoin. Oracle is trying to develop permission blockchain which would make blockchain technology applicable to businesses, especially ones dealing with financial data.
In the same trail, he shared how IoT will be the next big thing for businesses as it is going to emerge as the biggest future predictability tool. Oracle as a team is working on how to do bring preventive maintenance into place which could reduce the loss factor to a component that’s going to fail in the future.
Pinto further shared the growing adoptability rate of AI-ML (Artificial Intelligence-Machine learning). He shared approximately 80 per cent of data scientists will have deep learning in their toolkits by 2018 with the said technology becoming a critical driver for demand, fraud and failure predictions by 2019.
“Mobile is going to be at the forefront of the digital transformation”
“While it is understood that mobile has become the main interactive face between businesses and the users, however, mobility has gone to the next paradigm,” said Ravi while talking about the mobile being at the forefront of the digital transformation. Emphasising on the importance of a “conversational User Interface”, Ravi shared how Oracle is focusing on developing chatbots next.
“The application development is the key function area of the company, but we believe having a human agent in the form of a chatbot makes us use technology in the most optimum manner,” Pinto said. He shared an example of HR application and chatbot which can save an HR executive from keeping the track of leave balances and other concerned details and focus on other developments to enhance productivity in the organisation.
Oracle’s autonomous strategy
With a lot of stress being put on it already, it should be mentioned that Oracle is giving all its focus and dedication to automation. As part of its automation strategy, the company believes what customers today consume on the cloud is required to go on the next level. While talking about its autonomous platform, Ravi shared three S’s the automation would follow: Self-patching, self-securing and self-learning. Each phrase is self-explanatory and stands loudly for automation.
Concisely, automation is believed to reduce vulnerabilities in businesses. As part of automation strategy, artificial intelligence is going to take the central lead. Self-learning can be taken as the best example where the platform or application would learn by looking at the way users are interacting with it.
The challenges in the adoption of these technologies and ways businesses need to look at it
According to Ravi Pinto, the businesses today are giving lesser time to technologies, without understanding its nuances. They lack technological awareness due to which the businesses fail to reap the benefits of the technologies. Pinto advises businesses to become more than IT companies and have more eagerness for technologies. He quotes Uber as an example which is another traditional cab service provider but with the usage of applications and technologies, it is able to perform better than others.
He laid emphasis on the fact that the companies need to become pro-active about the upcoming technologies if they want to save themselves from the threats to their businesses.
The predictions for 2018-19
In the financial year 2018-19, the company’s primary area of focus would be to build its autonomous services with emerging technologies. The tech giant predicts that the number of application releases from typical businesses will double over the coming year. It believes, Chatbot apps with natural language processing will become the norm by the end of 2018 and 60 percent of IT organizations will move their critical systems management to the cloud by 2020.
Of the other technology predictions, the tech titan forecasts AI and big data technologies to play a decisive role in the enterprise this year, especially in the customer context. One of the key focus of the company is also to address security concerns and Oracle is soon to come up with more security and operation centres.
Oracle also recommends IT organizations to engage more with the developer community by organising more of code events in multiple cities and inviting various speakers from different companies.
