Oracle Open World 2018: Day One highlights

We saw the first day of Oracle OpenWorld 2018 (OOW 2018), which welcomed more than 60,000 customers and partners from 175 countries and 19 million virtual attendees. For a snapshot of the key news from today, please see below. It centered around Oracle’s two main focus areas, autonomous and business applications, and how new capabilities will help companies become more data driven and modernize their back office across finance, HR and Marketing.

Larry Ellison shared the company’s vision of the ‘Next Era of Cloud’, and previewed significant new capabilities and deployment options for the Autonomous Database. Self-driving, self-securing and self-repairing, the Oracle Autonomous Database automates management processes including patching, tuning and upgrading to keep critical infrastructures in top shape automatically. It also uniquely scans for security threats and applies updates while running to prevent cyber-attacks and data theft. Combined together this takes the complexity out of running a business-critical database while delivering unprecedented cost savings, security and

availability. Larry Ellison also shared his vision on the ‘Second Generation Cloud‘ where he said that it is purpose built for the enterprise and more technologically advanced and secure than any cloud on the market.

On the application front, the office of the CFO will get access to new AI and intelligent process automation capabilities being embedded into Oracle ERP and EPM including the automation of labour-intensive tasks, a new digital assistant (chatbot) to improve controls and audit compliance for expense processing and real-time supplier information and risk data. These will help organizations across industries enhance productivity, reduce costs, and improve controls.

For HR, new AI-powered innovations in the latest release of Oracle HCM Cloud bring employees new ways of getting information to commonly asked questions via HR chat bots and a mobile optimized UI; and for HR managers enhanced job matching capabilities and machine-learning-driven risk management.

In the area of Customer Experience, brands get a new way to deliver timely, relevant and consistent experiences for their customers through a new and comprehensive view into customer interactions across channels and applications, via Oracle CX Unity.  The new solution takes into account the fact that today’s consumer is nomadic, fickle and unpredictable, and unifies online, offline and third-party data.

To enable companies to take advantage of the rising consumer trend for subscription services, Oracle today announced how it is arming businesses with a better way to build subscription business models by helping develop predictable, recurring revenue models and managing billing and revenue recognition.

For B2B marketers, a new Oracle Data Cloud solution will help them reach over 115 million IDs at 1.5 million SMBs across 48 industry sectors and sub-sectors with digital campaigns. The solution enables B2B marketers to run account-based marketing campaigns to SMBs, who make up a massive proportion of the overall business landscape.

Additionally, Oracle Marketing Cloud has been named a leader in B2B marketing automation platforms by Forrester in the Q4 2018 Forrester Wave™: B2B Marketing Automation Platforms. Oracle has the highest score in the current offering and strategy categories and among the highest scores in the market presence category.