What we learned from Oracle OpenWorld 2017

These famous words by the Oracle CTO Larry Ellison in the Oracle OpenWorld 2016 garnered a lot of attention, as Oracle promised their customers an extensive suite of cloud offerings, and offered a closer look at their second generation IaaS data centers.

In the recently concluded OpenWorld 2017, Oracle continued on their quest to take on AWS and other major cloud vendors by unveiling a  host of cloud-based products and services. Not just that, they have  juiced these offerings up with Artificial Intelligence-based features, in line with all the buzz surrounding AI.

Key highlights from the Oracle OpenWorld 2017

Autonomous Database

Oracle announced a totally automated, self-driving database that would require no human intervention for managing or fine-tuning the database. Using machine learning and AI to eliminate human error, the new database guarantees 99.995% availability.

While taking another shot at AWS, Ellison promised in his keynote that customers moving from Amazon’s Redshift to Oracle’s database can expect a 50% cost reduction. Likely to be named as Oracle 18c, this new database is expected to be shipped across the world by December 2017.

Oracle Blockchain Cloud Service

Oracle joined IBM in the race to dominate the Blockchain space by unveiling its new cloud-based Blockchain service. Built on top of the Hyperledger Fabric project, the service promises to transform the way business is done by offering secure, transparent and efficient transactions.

Other enterprise-critical features such as provisioning, monitoring, backup and recovery are also some of the standard features which this service will offer to its customers.

“There are not a lot of production-ready capabilities around Blockchain for the enterprise. There [hasn’t been] a fully end-to-end, distributed and secure blockchain as a service,” Amit Zavery, Senior VP at Oracle Cloud.

It is also worth remembering that Oracle joined the Hyperledger consortium just two months ago, and the signs of them releasing their own service were there already.

Improvements to Business Management Services

The new features and enhancements introduced for the business management services were one of the key highlights of the OpenWorld 2017. These features now empower businesses to manage their customers better, and plan for the future with better organization of resources.

Some important announcements in this area were:

• Adding AI capabilities to its cloud services - The Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Apps will now make use of the AI capabilities to improve services for any kind of business
• Developers can now create their own AI-powered Oracle applications, making use of deep learning
• Oracle introduced AI-powered chatbots for better customer and employee engagement
• New features such as enhanced user experience in the Oracle ERP cloud and improved recruiting in the HR cloud services were introduced

Key Takeaways from Oracle OpenWorld 2017

With the announcements, Oracle have given a clear signal that they’re to be taken seriously. They’re already buoyed by a strong Q1 result which saw their revenue from cloud platforms hit $1.5 billion, indicating a growth of 51% as compared to Q1 2016,

Here are some key takeaways from the OpenWorld 2017, which are underlined by the aforementioned announcements:

• Oracle undoubtedly see cloud as the future, and have placed a lot of focus on the performance of their cloud platform. They’re betting on the fact that their familiarity with the traditional enterprise workload will help them win a lot more customers - something Amazon cannot claim.
• Oracle are riding on the AI wave and are trying to make their products as autonomous as possible - to reduce human intervention and human error, to some extent. With enterprises looking to cut costs wherever possible, this could be a smart move to attract more customers.
• The autonomous database will require Oracle to automatically fine-tune, patch, and upgrade its database, without causing any downtime. It will be interesting to see if the database can live up to its promise of ‘99.995% availability’.
• Is the role of Oracle DBAs going to be at risk, due to the automation? While it is doubtful that they will be out of jobs, there is bound to be a significant shift in their day to day operations. It is speculated that the DBAs would require to spend less time on the traditional administration tasks such as fine-tuning, patching, upgrading, etc. and instead focus on efficient database design, setting data policies and securing the data.
• Cybersecurity has been a key theme in Ellison’s keynote and the OpenWorld 2017 in general. As enterprise Blockchain adoption grows, so does the need for a secure, efficient digital transaction system. Oracle seem to have identified this opportunity, and it will be interesting to see how they compete with the likes of IBM and SAP to gain major market share.

Oracle’s CEO Mark Hurd has predicted that Oracle can win the cloud wars, overcoming the likes of Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Judging by the announcements in the OpenWorld 2017, it seems like they may have a plan in place to actually pull it off.

You can watch highlights from the Oracle OpenWorld 2017 on demand here.

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