By Cat Yong
Fresh from their cloud day event in Malaysia, that aimed to create mindshare and create conversation around cloud’s practical usage scenarios, a few trends were apparent for Oracle APJ VP of Application Development and Product Management, Doug Hughes and Oracle Malaysia Country Manager of Applications, Nik Feizal Haidi Hanafi.
Hughes observed, “Oracle has done a lot of cloud in the last few years. In mature markets, businesses see cloud as a way forward from their proprietary and legacy systems.
“In emerging markets, cloud is a way to get in cheap and quick, and supply businesses with software-as-a-service.”
For Asia Pacific overall, interest is starting to ramp up. In Malaysia as well, the business set is keeping an open mind towards services they could get from the cloud. Nik Feizal does add however that contrary to other regions where businesses go over IT’s head to obtain services by themselves, businesses in Malaysia, still refer to their IT.
Businesses’ acceptance of cloud technology is also reflected in research which finds that IT budgets have decreased 5 percent the past year, while tech spending by lines of business (LOB) have increased 20 percent.
A survey of 364 Oracle Application User Group (OAUG) members also found a significant portion reporting that LOB deployments of cloud technology, is on the rise.
Minimal disruption
Both Hughes and Nik Feizal shared that their customers in Malaysia tend to be on-premise customers who want to extend capabilities like social, talent management and more via the cloud.
Hughes said, “There must be a need for these next-generation products (capabilities).
“Instead of a 3-year transformation programme that affects everyone, the business finds it can address just that one particular area they want, via cloud services. “
Oracle Cloud applications
Oracle Cloud applications are touted to be able to offer a complete end-to-end and complete process capability with a complete suite for sales and marketing, a complete suite for customer experience, and complete suites for enterprise resource planning (ERP), human capital management (HCM) and talent management.
These apps are cross-functional business applications with information and data shared seamlessly across other Oracle Cloud apps and even other systems. They also come with support for next-generation trends like social engagement, collaboration tools and a user interface that takes into account mobile screens.
Worldwide, Oracle has over 10,000 customers with over 25 million users using Oracle Cloud applications which help businesses jump on the next-generation bandwagon and modernise their workplace.
