Oracle’s major conference, OpenWorld, takes place this week in San Francisco. The annual bash takes over a city block and is a major boon to the local economy.
Bob Evans, the chief communications officer gave a briefing to the press about some of the majors themes and trends that are influencing the announcements and content for the event.
Evans said that research from customer interaction and cooperative efforts with the likes of Constellation Research has revealed that the world of enterprise is under a set of pressures that are not only intense, but some are unprecedented. Top board priorities include readiness for inorganic growth, efficiencies and improvements in post-merger environments, growth in non-traditional markets and that now familiar refrain, digital transformation.
Evans said that the goal emerging from all of this is to turn disruption, from whatever quarter, into growth.
But illustrating the turmoil in the world of big business, Evans said that 52% of Fortune 500 companies listed in 2000 no longer exist, due to mergers, acquisitions and some collapses. Combined with this is the data explosion where in 2014 and 2015, more data volume was created than in previous human history. The workforce is changing too, as by 2020, 50% of the workforce will be millennials.
Among these millennials, 60% leave a job within three years, and 56% say that flexibility in a job takes precedent over salary.
This changing workforce is prompting more tech savvy tech buyers too. These new savvy buyers on average spend twice as much, but more than three quarters (77%) express no brand affinity or loyalty.
Into this world, Evans said, cloud computing is introducing a range of opportunities, the greatest of which is to allow CEOs to focus on innovation and growth, rather than on technology.
The CIO is changing too, with four simultaneous priorities, namely business transformation, technology visionary, customer expert and advocate and “culture warrior”.
Oracle’s position, said Evans, is to provide a complete range of solutions and services for cloud, with the emphasis on customer choice, preventing lock-in. He said that the best experience is still with an Oracle stack, unsurprisingly, but the major emphasis was on not only adoption at your own pace, but the ability to integrate with any option at any point in the stack.
This approach appears to be bearing fruit for Oracle, as Evans said that 70% of its new cloud customers were organisations that had not previously done business with the company. In a recent earnings call, Oracle reported that PaaS and SaaS earnings rose 34% for the quarter ending in August, with 280 new customers in the period. ERP and ECM were highlights in the area, with 200 new customers.
OpenWorld in 2015 is expected to see more than 60,000 attendees from more than 140 countries.
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