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Monday, 12 November 2018 00:46 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
By Nisthar Cassim
Global leader in business software, Oracle is empowering more enterprises in the Asia Pacific, and the success to date and the future potential have triggered more investments and engagement in the region.
“We are doing extremely well in Asia Pacific and we are bullish about our growth and future prospects,” declared Oracle ASEAN and South Asia Growth Economies (SAGE) Cluster Regional Managing Director and Vice President Cherian Varghese.
“Throughout ASEAN and SAGE, we see a lot of successes as we continue to make this region a key priority,” added Cherian, who oversees 18 countries including Sri Lanka.
According to him, Oracle has seen tremendous growth in its Software as a Service (SaaS) portfolio along with Netsuite offerings. “The overall performance of Oracle ERP suite is very good in the region. We are announcing success stories and wins at a rate never experienced before. We are having customer go-live celebrations across Asia Pacific regularly,” he added during an interview with select media from the ASEAN and SAGE, including the Daily FT, who were invited for the company’s flagship event Oracle OpenWorld 2018 in San Francisco drawing over 60,000 participants over four days, recently.
“The speed at which the new deployments are happening is impressive. In the past, ERP deployment took a long time but today it has been as fast or shorter as much as six weeks. Customers are opting for less customisation in core ERP but adding features or localisation via API to achieve faster implementation, which makes lot of business sense,” Cherian pointed out.
“We are also investing aggressively in the region given growth dynamics and potential,” he emphasised.
He said Oracle is expanding its Data Centre Footprint in the Asia Pacific with next ones coming up in Korea, Japan, Australia and India to satisfy specific customer requirements. “We also have a unique offering of ‘Cloud at Customer’ by which we are able to address concerns of regulators,” he added.
Oracle’s growing success in the Asia Pacific and enhanced engagement with customers and partners in the region was evident at OpenWorld 2018.
The event saw over 300 customers and over 100 partners from the ASEAN and SAGE region including Sri Lanka. Cherian, for whom the 2018 OpenWorld was his 13th event in its history, described the presence of a large number from the region at OpenWorld as “very promising”.
“We engage with our ASEAN + SAGE customers regularly to understand them and their business needs and challenges better. We have an ongoing engagement initiative called ‘Impact’, a one-day event in every country in ASEAN and SAGE where we highlight some of the innovations from Oracle. Clients and partners participation at Oracle OpenWorld is a further important step in this process,” Cherian explained.
He said customers from the region drawn from banking, telecom, manufacturing sectors were quite elated about Oracle’s offering and new announcements.
The Regional MD and VP also said as part of continuous engagement and a testimony of importance placed on the Asia Pacific region, Oracle will hold a mini OpenWorld in Singapore in March 2019. “This reinforces Oracle’s commitment to the markets in Asia Pacific,” he added. Similar mini regional OpenWorlds will be held in London and Dubai as well next year.
“We are a B2B company, so we talk to our customers. This kind of engagement is part of our strategy,” he added.
Cherian said traditionally, Oracle has been an enterprise organisation with greater focus on large enterprises. However, this has changed over the years with focus on small businesses and start-ups as well. “A new small start-up today could be a world enabler tomorrow. We are cognizant of this fact,” he said. In that context, Oracle has split its business and teams into two. One is an enterprise sales force which goes to large and medium sized organisations. The other is Oracle Digital Prime (ODP) which is flexible, nimble and caters to the small and emerging companies including start-ups understanding specific challenges of this segment. Another example is Netsuite which reinforces our offering to the small businesses, he added.
At the OpenWorld 2018, the Oracle Autonomous Database, the world’s most popular and technologically advanced database, came under spotlight. Revolutionising data management, Oracle Autonomous Database manages, tunes and patches itself, enabling users to innovate faster on a highly secure platform that allows users to pay for only what they use.
“We believe that Oracle’s Autonomous database is a game-changer,” Cherian pointed out. He noted that the longstanding Oracle clients in the ASEAN and SAGE region are excited about the Autonomous Database.
“Recently, Oracle did a world tour to promote Autonomous Database and touched lot of prospective customers. The showcasing of this innovation was a great experience. Attracting people to a workshop is a difficult. But one on Autonomous saw huge demand so much so we had to turned down some requests,” he added.
Digitisation and journey to the Cloud
According to Cherian, the common challenge, hence the need among corporates or industries across ASEAN and SAGE countries, is digitisation. “As a result, we are seeing a plethora of opportunities in this region for Oracle solutions which addresses the requirements of customers. The traction we are seeing in this region towards Autonomous is very impressive and exciting,” he said.
“The 40-year old Oracle is a data company. We were born as a data company and data is our DNA. So our existence and success reinforces the fact that we have been good custodians of data. We have the world’s largest knowledge base of data, its importance and its security. So, for customers who are conscious of these concerns, Oracle is a natural choice,” he emphasised. During the world tour on Autonomous Oracle had showcased some benchmarks to prove that there is no data latency at all.
Cherian observed that the ASEAN and SAGE region in general is risk averse or less risk takers and usually waits to see how new technology shapes and succeeds in developed markets.
“This could be due to the fact that value or cost of money is very important in our region. We don’t have lot of discretionary funds to dispose of on experiments. The region is home for ‘cautious starters’ with lot of Return on Investments analysis,” he said.
“However, I believe there will come a time for early and full realisation and the region will embrace new technology or innovations fast. Having said that, there are several visionary and dynamic early adaptors in the region as well which augurs well for the future potential. We see early adopters of Oracle Autonomous solutions in logistics and supply chain, telecom and banking. It is the business departments or management who are taking decisions on Autonomous and not IT department per se,” emphasised the Regional MD and VP.
With regard to Asia Pacific’s shift to the Cloud, Cherian noted the first signs of resistance were over in the region, as customers have started to reach out or explore the Cloud option and benefits.
“The entire industry, including vendors and partners, has enabled this shift or traction. Today the question among every CEO and CIO isn’t ‘Why Cloud’ but ‘How to’ or ‘When can I’ or ‘How soon’ with realisation that they should have started the Cloud journey much earlier,” he explained.
“There is growing recognition or acknowledgement that Cloud is here to stay from an organisational standpoint; they know they have to embrace it, change the architecture. The discussion is now what are the cost and time savings, return on investments, etc.,” Cherian pointed out.
At OpenWorld 2018, Oracle showcased the next era of Cloud or the second generation version that is purpose built for the enterprise and more technologically advanced and secure. Extending its lead in the cloud ERP market, Oracle also announced new artificial intelligence updates to Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Cloud and Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Cloud. It was also revealed that over 5,500 organisations in 85 countries and 23 industries have selected Oracle ERP Cloud to provide a complete, innovative, and secure financial platform for their organisation. Oracle enjoys a 21% global market share in the ERP industry.
He said that in the ‘On-premise’ segment, software is shelf-ware and people used to buy software and some were never used. “In Cloud, cost of purchase is much lower and customers buy software that they can ensure full utilisation of. Given this phenomenon, Oracle introduced ‘Universal Credit’ whereby customers buy value and not software products on the shelf. For example, if one has $ 100 credit, you can use it for Autonomous data warehouse and if done with it, if one decides to, can shift to Autonomous transaction processing,” he said. “Across our Platform as a Service (PaaS) portfolio, we offer great flexibility. Another option is Bring Your Own Licences (BYOL),” Cherian added.
With giant technology platform providers such as Alibaba, Baidu also changing the game in the region, he said Oracle is supplementing or further empowering businesses in this ecosystem.
“Oracle is B2B and not B2C, and we will play to our strengths thereby helping our customers appropriately. We have a strong following of enterprise customers in the region and globally. We have a domination in the enterprise space. There is a saying, ‘It is not the big fish eating the small but the fast fish eating the slow’. Is Oracle slow? No, we are extremely fast and we know we have a unique position, and that is ‘data’, emphasised Cherian.
