This week, Supply Chain Matters has been attending the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco. We have previously shared Dispatch One and Dispatch Two.
Tuesday at Oracle OpenWorld featured the theme of Cloud technology permeated. This morning’s keynote was anchored by Thomas Kurian, President of Product Development at Oracle, assisted by David Donatelli, Executive Vice President, Cloud Business Group.
Donatelli kicked-off the keynote by outlining for attendees, Oracle’s defined six on-ramps to the Cloud each offering customer’s various options in moving IT infrastructure and applications. Kurian reminded attendees of Oracle’s ten year journey towards Cloud computing and this week’s major announcement of the autonomous database. There were also five new infrastructure product announcements related to technology related to faster compute processors, graphical computing processing, block storage, high-scale DNS services and upwards of 25 gigabytes of Internet bandwidth delivered to the host server.
In the business applications area, Kurian emphasized that Oracle is on a journey to change the traditional design principles of business applications in different ways:
Complete SaaS applications suite including ERP, supply chain and procurement with the design principle of one platform, one data model.
A principle that applications should become more intelligent over-time, including incorporating AI and machine learning capabilities within the applications themselves. Announced was the introduction of blockchain technology both as a platform service and embedded in specific business applications. A specific mention was application in procurement transactions as well as intercompany B2B transactions. Swix new supply chain management applications are now leveraging Internet of Things technology capabilities leveraging Oracle’s IoT Cloud platform services.
Oracle executive chairman and CTO delivered his second presentation in a packed afternoon keynote session. Whereas Sunday’s keynote emphasized the autonomous database announcement, today’s talk focused on the related capability, namely announcing Oracle Management and Security Cloud, described as a complete Cloud native system that automates cyber security, also powered by machine learning for what was described as real-time security remediation.
Ellison eloquently related current headlines related to the recent massive Equifax data breach as well as the U.S. Federal Government’s Office of Personnel Management data breach compromising information on federal employee’s security clearance files. He opined that today’s security breaches often come from state actors with very sophisticated capabilities.  Observed that today’s systems landscape provide too many separate tools, data silos and not enough actionable insights, advocating that a fully automated management control platform is the best defense.
Many of today’s subsequent presentations featured areas of Oracle business applications that will leverage newly announced technologies. This Editor and supply chain analyst had the opportunity to sit-in on some supply chain and procurement business applications related sessions as well as to participate in select individual invited interchanges with Oracle executives.
In our subsequent dispatches, we will be summarizing insights and takeaways, especially in the area of autonomous database capabilities applied to mission critical OLTP applications support such as a company’s order management or customer fulfillment systems. We will also conclude our coverage with summary impressions of this year’s event.
Stay tuned.
Bob Ferrari
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