Last week, I attended Oracle CloudWorld in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was my first experience at CloudWorld (or OpenWorld) and I had a really great time. Not only did I have the opportunity to travel with multiple colleagues from the Capgemini UK team, but we also connected face-to-face with many others from Capgemini North America and various other areas around the globe. In addition, I saw so many familiar faces from previous Oracle and community events, so it was great to catch-up all round.
This post captures a few key thoughts of my time at the event!
After an awesome light/video/projection/dance intro, Safra Catz, Oracle CEO, took the main keynote stage to kick off the conference. 2 things really stood out for me during this keynote:
Safra Catz, Oracle CEO – Oracle CloudWorld22
- “Being bold is the way to win. … Being timid could wipe you out”
- “Your success is absolutely central to everything we do” (to Oracle Customers)
She delivered a truly inspiring pitch weaving in key themes that we saw for the remainder of the week which I think are summarized well in the 2 points above. The COVID-19 Global Pandemic indeed forced us all to be bold and to approach new challenges in new ways and secondly, I noticed a significant shift in messaging, from Oracle, throughout the week – This shift being a customer-centric mindset.
There were a bunch of “On the Sofa” interviews with varying Partners and Customers. Nvidia opened up this round of conversation where the CEO, Jensen Huang, touched on the expanding Oracle/Nvidia partnership and rounded up his slot by saying “I think the next 10 years are going to be some of the most exciting times for our industry” – I hope so!
Gordon Mackechnie, CTO @ Deutsche Bank picked up messaging around risk management and “if we innovate the right way, we can be even more secure”. Raul Obregon – CTO @ Grupo Bimbo, Diane Schwarz – CIO @ Johnson Controls both also bringing topical conversation to the forum regarding recession and moving quickly but carefully. Diane even went on to say “If you haven’t started, you’re already too late”, a particularly poignant moment.
The one that everyone had been waiting for however, was to see Christian Horner – Team Principal & CEO @ Oracle Red Bull Racing, on the stage. He joked about how as soon as they put the Oracle logo on the side of the car, they started winning…. so they put a bigger one on and won the championship! Take from that what you will but I’m not sure that the decal had anything to do with it (*wink*) – During this conversation, again the key message of boldness was coming through.
(You can watch the whole keynote here).
The second keynote of day 1 was Larry Ellison’s (Chairman of the Board & CTO @ Oracle). Larry has always been a popular speaker given his current and previous roles in the Oracle corporation, in his session, he suggests an “Internet of Clouds” where all cloud providers are interconnected and his view is not a question of if, rather a question of when… again BIG and BOLD.
Another big topic of the session was about healthcare, this is the 3rd key message I heard during CloudWorld (huge investment into the healthcare space). It would seem that there are particularly ambitious plans in the making to create a national U.S public health record database – with a view to it going global later. He did acknowledge that this had “never been attempted before” and didn’t give any timescales – however, it was very clear to see, throughout the week, that Healthcare will have significant focus from Oracle moving forwards.
(You can watch the whole keynote here).
The final keynote I will mention in this post was delivered on day 2 by Clay Magouyrk (EVP, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure @ Oracle). Clay continued a similar theme introduced by Larry Ellison, of interoperability in the various clouds. He proudly spoke of how Oracle Cloud hosts more than 40 regions with “Many more coming” – but that this actually isn’t all about location, rather of data center classification (public cloud, commercial, secure, etc. We’ve seen, in recent years, tightening of data sovereignty across the EU – and that they have “been very busy” so that OCI can boast 105 services, 260 features launching in the past year alone and 103% YoY consumption growth ….. pretty impressive.
Oracle Alloy, also a hot topic by Clay.
(You can watch the whole keynote here).
Aside from attending keynote sessions, I had the opportunity to scout out the conference area including the exhibition hall and throughout the week, I attended a number of interesting sessions on varying topics:
- Oracle Blockchain
- Oracle Analytics
- Oracle Autonomous Database
- Oracle Kubernetes Engine, Containerization & Cloud Native development
- Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
- Digital Twins
Throughout the 3 days, I was part of the team working on the Capgemini booth – where we got to speak with many customers, product organizations and other partners.. whilst also getting to know our global Capgemini counterparts!!!
The Capgemini team had 4 sessions in the agenda and it was great to see the Oracle community engaging with our experts and hearing our ideas & customer success stories. The 4 sessions were:
Brinker Says YES (Your Enterprise System) for Transformation
Brinker International, Inc. has partnered with Capgemini to modernize their enterprise by implementing Oracle’s ERP, EPM, supply chain management, and human capital management software platforms. Hear how Capgemini will implement these platforms’ functionality with help from Oracle Consulting Services. Gain insights on the implementation approach, key lessons learned, challenges faced, and how Brinker is collaborating with Capgemini using Oracle Cloud to transform their restaurant operations. See how doing this helps modernize HR function to improve employee productivity to manage ever-changing restaurant business challenges and, more importantly, employee alignment and adoption strategies to manage this significant organizational change.
Heathrow Flies into the Oracle Cloud
Heathrow Airport, the largest airport in the UK, recently completed the biggest business transformation in its 75-year history—moving its back-office systems to Oracle Fusion Cloud applications, utilizing Oracle SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS. This program was delivered during the worst of the Covid pandemic, with Heathrow suffering from organizational challenges and a drop in revenue by some 90 percent. The transformation, implemented by Capgemini and Oracle Consulting, was a core component of Heathrow’s strategy to modernize key operations and support future growth. Hear how Heathrow used a variety of Oracle Integration Cloud patterns in circa 90 integrations to exchange data with on-premises and external third-party applications.
Ready for Take-Off: Heathrow’s Transformation of the People Function
Hear how Heathrow Airport navigated its way through transforming the people function, tailoring the user experience, and using the benefits of Oracle Cloud HCM to thrive in an ever-changing environment. Learn how they collaborated with Oracle Consulting Services (OCS) and Capgemini, the key lessons learned, challenges faced, and even how to complete a successful go live in a complex multipillar implementation of Cloud ERP.
Confronting Volatility – Extending the Digital Twin into the Corporate Function
The Capgemini VIMS project delivers a complete integrated digital ecosystem for industrial and manufacturing environments. It combines an industrial Internet of Things platform with a digital twin of the factory or production line. Complemented by “what if” intelligent scenario modelling, the production line can be simulated to optimize the manufacturing process. With its single data model, Oracle’s suite of SaaS applications and built-in machine learning capabilities mean this modelling can be replicated across applications. Learn how this unprecedented potential to model the corporate functions in harmony with the manufacturing process can help you better predict and plan for supply chain volatility and failures.
Summary
Aside from the conference (…and the jet lag…), there was still time blow off steam and socialize with other attendees. I also tried to have my morning coffee in a different location each day:
Whilst the conference was only a few days, I felt like I came away having learnt a lot with new exciting plans and ideas! I still do need to fully digest the week… hopefully more on that in future, but for now, I hope I can return to CloudWorld 2023!
AMY SIMPSON-GRANGE - BLOG 