Earlier this week, my colleague John Reid spoke with Steve Miranda, EVP of Applications Development at Oracle, about AI making supply chains smarter and filling the logistics black hole. This took place ahead of the Oracle CloudWorld Tour in London this week, where he spoke with Cormac Watters, EVP of EMEA Applications, about how he sees Oracle’s growth in the current economic climate. I was able to hear his take on how the Fusion portfolio is developing. He looks at the climate and how AI is playing out in the enterprise.
Watters has a long history in the enterprise space, having worked at companies such as SAP and Infor before joining Oracle, and also held the role of CIO for the last few years. During his nearly 20 years at Enterprise, his experience working with his buyers, and Enterprise as a buyer himself, has always proven to be an interesting conversation.
First, I would be interested to hear Watters’ take on why Oracle has not been hit as hard as some of its competitors have been in recent months and is now battling economic and market uncertainty. rice field. After a few rich quarters during the worst of COVID-19, we’ve seen other vendors cut jobs significantly and soften their growth projections. Oracle continues to perform well in comparison.
The key, argues Watters, is leadership and having a long-term view of what happens. he explains:
Honestly, I’m very biased, but Safra [Catz, Oracle CEO] That’s excellent. She can see around every corner. It was about two years ago when everyone had COVID and was dealing with what was happening. The tech industry hasn’t collapsed, it’s actually boomed.
But she said, Some of us were yelling, “Oh, let’s recruit 5,000 more people.”
Oracle is a quarterly business, but we operate with a medium to long term view. I think that’s the real reason. And the fact that it has made the switch to cloud business.
Our company is 40 years old. We have done ourselves what we tell our customers. Since the product has become a service, it had to be developed and delivered differently. A contract is completely different, a subscription. Projects should be shorter and faster. Moved them all.
This long-term view has certainly proven true on the front lines of Oracle’s cloud strategy, especially on infrastructure and platforms. Critics (including myself in some cases!) didn’t understand the need for a complete enterprise stack and how it would benefit. Vendor in the long term. Its business continues to thrive, and the development of AI within the enterprise may offer new opportunities (but more on that later).
I also wanted to get the latest information from Watters on their Fusion application portfolio. But last year at Oracle CloudWorld in Las Vegas, he noted a significant increase in users willing to talk about deploying Fusion applications. The conversations I had with users were about moving more departments to Fusion and a deeper understanding of changing operations to adapt to being cloud-based.
Watters says Fusion is now accelerating and this is backed by an invested SI community. he says:
Fusion has been around for a long time. And I don’t know if we’ve reached that tipping point, but EMEA had 154 coming online in Q3. So it wasn’t a bit of a plan to get it up and running. These are real runs.
That’s roughly twice a calendar day, but definitely more than twice a business day. And in North America it’s even bigger. And what’s interesting is that over 70% of them were controlled by partners. What this means is that there is a significant ecosystem that is really driving the conversation around Fusion.
is that true? Because they won’t invest unless it’s a real business. Accenture, Deloitte PwC, IBM, KPMG, and others all have important practices. This is a real indicator that this has taken off. Fusion currently has 13,000 customers and over 70% of them are live.
AI in the enterprise
As pointed out many times by Diginomica, the focus on AI, especially generative AI, has reached the peak of hype in the market. The launch of ChatGPT has given people and businesses new insights into how artificial intelligence can be deployed, but it has also made people think about its impact on organizational structures and workforces.
Some other vendors in the market have jumped at the opportunity to integrate OpenAI’s ChatGPT or adapt it into their own tools. But as Miranda said in an interview, AI has been deployed by vendors for some time and is already in use. Yes, generative AI is different in some cases, but Oracle may take a more stable approach. Watters said:
I think it’s going to be a bit hysterical to say that this is like George Orwell. This is healthy because we need to be able to. I think a little hysteria is good to keep things in check.
But the actual underlying technology and capabilities are very useful. So you should take advantage of these AI type stuff. It’s a bit like “moving to the cloud”. What exactly do you mean? So, “we are using AI”? What exactly do you mean? You need to do a good job of explaining what aspects you are focusing on. So we try to do it. But I think it’s the real deal and I’ll stay here.
Oracle technology is great. The developers are also amazing, but they are always doing things from a medium- to long-term perspective. Little to no kneeling response. In January there was an executive review of him, and Larry Ellison’s team spoke to us about where we’re headed. We accept that, but we have another chance and a complete stack.
And this is where Oracle finds it interesting, and long-term investments in cloud infrastructure can be particularly attractive. It’s held within four walls. And that’s before we even mention the vendor’s investment in Cerner and its healthcare plans. Of course, data anonymization and privacy will be at the forefront of the conversation, but when thinking about creating and using AI, Oracle feels like it has a unique opportunity compared to other players in the market.
There weren’t any big AI announcements at Oracle CloudWorld in London this week, but I think we’ll get some insight into this long-term view later this year.
focus of the year
Thinking about the next 12 months or so, Watters has his priorities straight. First, we continue to prioritize predictable growth to ensure stability. And second, as we continue to build our industry expertise, buyers can speak to Oracle in a language that makes sense to their market, not just about technology inside and out. Speed comes first. he says:
we are growing We are growing both bookings and renewal rates. Both are growing steadily. I believe that growth gives our customers, partners, and Oracle a sense of success and happiness. So growth comes first.
But this is about predictable growth. Predictable growth allows you to plan your workforce accordingly.
And how we grow is identifying in which industries and in which countries it makes more sense. Therefore, we restructured the operation method. We’ve transitioned from product-oriented salespeople to account executives managing a portfolio of applications alongside customers. That team has to do it by industry. For example, the same account executive can speak exclusively to banks, which have a built-up vocabulary, knowledge, and reference database of what is happening in their industry. This is so that it can bring value beyond the application. That’s what’s on my mind right now to get it done.
And I want my project to be faster. It’s about the speed of value. If you have an ERP program, it’s over a year away from a significant go-live, so I think it’s too late. So what do we do? So what tools can we give our partners to help them move their projects forward faster? We have the best applications in the world and we are growing the best tools to deploy them. I think so, but this is another way of looking at it.
my view
Having a long-term view isn’t easy, it’s not effortless, but it can be rewarding. The opportunities available at OCI can be very attractive, so I’m keeping an eye on AI news coming out of Oracle with interest.
