Oracle appears keen to remove AI-related generative hyperbole from its lexicon in favor of a more direct approach, as the company aims for big profits in the space.
Going on stage to Oracle CloudWorld 2024Doug Kehring, Oracle's executive vice president of corporate operations, led the company's strategy, defending its purist business approach and attacking some rivals in the process.
“Everything we do is enterprise technology,” he said. “We don't build game systems, we don't do consumer advertising, and we certainly don't write term papers for your kids.”
With the dizzying buzz around generative AI over the past 15 months, resulting in a slew of new product and service announcements from major industry players, Oracle appears set to take a more reserved approach and measured toward technology, and is setting its sights on the practical functionality of AI. .
“We are deeply focused… on offering [the] “The most comprehensive end-to-end set of technologies to help any organization within any industry automate their business,” Kehring said.
Oracle said its AI product portfolio is designed with businesses in mind, aimed at accelerating revenue, improving operational efficiency and improving the quality of user experiences.
So far, it seems to be doing something right. The company recently surpassed its quarterly earnings estimates and saw cloud revenue increase 25% along with a 29% increase in other performance obligations.
Although it may currently struggle to compete on a brand level with companies like Microsoft or AWS, it has a small but promising foothold in the cloud infrastructure market through its offerings.
For Oracle, the key is to generate clearly defined, real-world value for any business that uses its products.
“Other vendors may offer technologies similar to Oracle, although I would say they are not as good, but that is no longer enough,” Kehring said.
“Technology alone is no longer enough…rather, it is the value that technology can deliver as part of a broader transformation. That’s what matters,” she added.
This is the basis on which Oracle positions itself, clearly contributing to generating value through its specific solutions.
Like the overall name of its new AI offerings, Oracle strives for clarity: “What never goes out of style is keeping it simple, so we chose a name that's easy to remember: Oracle AI,” Kehring said.
What makes Oracle's new AI attractive to businesses?
Incorporating AI features within Oracle's tools “from the ground up” is key to moving the company's value proposition forward, Kehring said, and was a concept referenced repeatedly during the flurry of announcements at the London conference. .
“For us, AI is built in from the beginning,” he told delegates. The new features introduced by the company, all of which are brought together under the roof of Oracle's existing Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications Suite, have been designed with the overall mission of improving decision making and improving the experience of both employees and customers. the clients.
Oracle will support more than fifty generative AI use cases within Oracle Fusion and, as the company stated, these features will be integrated within “existing business workflows” spanning finance, supply chain, human resources, sales, marketing and customer services.
It will connect AI across four aspects of Fusion Cloud Application Suite, namely cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP), cloud supply chain and manufacturing (SCM), human capital management (HCM), and experience platforms. of the customer (CX).
AI tools within these platforms will serve a wide range of functions, including insight narratives, project proposal generation, deal summaries, and job category landing pages, to name just a few.
The company was keen to emphasize that it is targeting a wide range of enterprise-grade AI use cases across all of these offerings, strongly underscoring the desire to position itself as he reference leader in the enterprise cloud market.
Rajan Krishnan, vice president of Oracle's product development group, said ITPro The new offerings have been made possible by its existing technological infrastructure, which will stand it in good stead for years to come.
“We have both vectors, we have the technology side covered, we have the horizontal processes like ERP and HCM covered,” Krishnan said. Similarly, the robust nature of this existing technology stack allows for easy implementation of new AI tools.
“That strong infrastructure allows us to introduce all these things very quickly, and we are the beneficiaries,” Krishnan said.
Oracle's success is reflected in its customers
Kehring said Oracle defines its success by “reflecting” the success of its customers, and while that has an air of promotional rhetoric, it appears that Oracle's new offerings have been a hit with customers so far.
Oracle CloudWorld's speaker billing was packed with success stories from customers, from Nokia to the UK Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
These stories helped sing Oracle's praises in the B2B space, further differentiating the cloud company from the competition and highlighting a variety of tangible success stories.
“We put your success at the center of everything we do…and we are truly here to serve,” Kehring said.
