Oracle has finally decided to take the OpenWorld outside US and into Europe. Well, the UK really, which I am now not sure is part of it. Anyways, my experience involved two days in ExCel London attending to talks, talking to exhibitors and general networking among other Oracle & IT professionals.
General Take on OW
Let’s just say that as an overall experience, OpenWorld is a set of experiences that can go from wide, neo-fiction topics such as futurism to deeply technical labs where you could learn how to auto scale a DB machine depending on the load.
Regarding the presenters, it was nice to see a progressive, if not left-leaning take (by US standards, of course) on topics such as the Government Shutdown (Mark Hurd use this as the reason for him not being able to renew his passport) and Eddie Izzard’s closing monologue on his life experiences as a self-defined lesbian transvestite.
What were the core topics? I’d split it in 3 sections:
- General talks about politics, the future and rethinking the way we do or see things
- Product specific talks, notably Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Oracle Cloud Blockchain dAutonomous DB, AI, Machine Learning and a safer public cloud altogether
- Customer Success Stories, where Aer Lingus BI Manager, Mark McManus, got to talk, among others
I’d like to detail now about the keynotes that I assisted during these two days. I want to let you know that, even if I try hard, I wasn’t able to go to as many talks as I wanted to, because many were full even minutes before their scheduled start time!
Day 1 – Wednesday, 16th January
Rapidly Build Autonomous Analytical Data Marts
(Keith Laker / Graeme Kerr)
The talk included a discussion about Autonomous Data Warehouse and Data Visualization Desktop.
The idea of plugin any kind of visualization tool such as Tableau for it to plug it into
They’ve built a very simple model as a demo for OpenWorld.
He mentioned that the DVD software is free for all to use.
It looks like he built small charts or limited reports. Can he create a full interactive dashboard based on it?
Challenge: I have some data, I want to analyze it. How do I start? Using a Guided Journey. How?
Create a DB, assign a user, load some data. Oracle provides free data warehouse instance.
He was playing a video, so no proper hands-on demo.
Live SQL? Check out livesql.oracle.com. This is a feature in 18c
Importing the data: you have two ways of doing that: Local File and Oracle Object Storage
Local file import is pretty straightforward, but only good for some ad-hoc work.
What about periodic uploads? Push it using Object Storage. If you have AWS or Azure, then that is fine too
Cloud Load is the option for object storage, but doing it from SQL developer seems like a still manual work.
Machine Learning on ADWC: he bumped the machine to 8 CPUs. They provide in a notebook with 8 models where you can do Data Mining (such as clustering or regression analysis). Where are those model built into? Are they part of ADWC?
They give you up to 3500 hours for free at the time of writing: https://cloud.oracle.com/tryit
Morning Keynote Speakers
(Amanda St. L Jobbins / Yves Bernardt / Matt Bradley / Andrew Mendelsohn / Keith Laker / Kyle York / Mark Stevenson)
Amanda mentioned that this is the first OpenWorld in the event. She mentioned that the Excel building was the same as the Olympics. They held the table tennis event. Also Paralympic and ComicCon.
Yves Bernardt – Accenture – Vision – What is coming?
He presented a vision of Intelligent Enterprise. He used augmented reality for that. Pretty cool
He mentioned a set of trends:
Trend 1: Citizen AI – Raising AI to Benefit Business and Society
Time to teach your company right from wrong.
Trend 2: Extended Reality – The End of Distance
Redesign business with immersive experiences
Trend 3: Data Veracity – Confidence in the integrity of a company’s data is critical
He said 2/3 of the businesses are hosted on Oracle Systems
Trend 4: Frictionless Business – Built to Partner at Scale
Blockchain plays an important part in this
Trend 5: Internet of Thinking – Creating Intelligent Distributed Systems
The idea is to open your business architecture, so it becomes frictionless.
Final Message: Intelligence Enterprise Unleashed
You need to move to the cloud. That is the only way to scale.
Matt Bradley – Intelligent Business Applications
What makes an application intelligent? Interactivity. Where applications trying to understand what you are trying to do. We can improve that over time. Examples? Planning area. Forecast. Look at your history. Identify machine learning algorighms, look at the core data, make better predictions.
What is the next wave? Pervasive AI. Auto-suggest, auto-complete, chat bots.
What about competition?
1-Oracle’s solutions is available now.
2-Better way to do your job. Other vendors need to go to other apps
3-Can accelerate new features in a better way
Autonomous
The more we used data, the more valuable it becomes
This is the most innovative product he has ever since coming from Oracle. Idea is to reduce costs: admin costs up to 80%; dynamically adjust resources, save up to 70%
Reduce Risks – Avoid breach costs, reputational damage, and revenue losses
Focus on Innovation: shift resources to higher value tasks, accelerate productivity and time to insights
Self driving – Automatically provision, secure, monitor, backup, recover, tune and upgrade
Self-Securing – Automatically apply security patches with no downtime
Self-Repairing – Maximize availability; downtime < 2.5 min per year
Andrew Mendelsohn – Executive Vice President, Database Server Technologies
He apparently is one of the grand fathers of the DB
When you move to a managed service, of course you will see a reduction of work. So DBAs will be able to focus on Data Architecture, development, etc
Data technology is changing. Memory is becoming persistent. If the system goes down, the content will be stored. Major redesign on the DB based on this.
The other great big thing is getting value out of the data. They are seeing who can get the most out of the data. Idea is to get all your data into a virtual pool of information.
Keith Laker – Product Manager – Autonomous Data Warehouse
He provided a demo, similar to the one early morning, but faster. A cool thing he showed was the ability to scale from Data Visualization using a slider
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure – Second generation cloud; foundation for AI, autonomous and other Oracle Cloud Services
New Innovations:
-Enterprise Cloud and multi-cloud core-to-edge security
Dramatically lower compute costs & new high performance workloads via new enhancements and partnerships
-Expand OCI data center coverage
He is confident this will be available for decades & decades
OCI capabilities:
App Dev – Container native, serverless, chatbots, blockchain, AI
Integration – Oracle and non-Oracle apps, both on-premises and in the cloud
Analytics – Data Ingest, reporting and analysis and visualization
Security – Layers of defense across apps, users, data and infrastructure
Autonomous DB – Self-driving, self securing, self-repairing capabilities
Kyle York – Vice President – Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Product Strategy
Our second gen cloud is different that the rest, particularly on the self-service capabilities
He said there hasn’t been a market for things we do. Data intensive workloads. There hasn’t been another provider that knows the business as Oracle does. So they designed OCI that way
There is a whole different expectation about SLAs, requirements and so on on the cloud
There has to be a path to the cloud. Have an environment that is fit for purpose.
It’s all about figuring out the business value with the customer. It is not what you are spending in cloud, but the overall architecture. What is it Autonomous DBabout? On prem spending or renting/scaling depending on your needs?
Oracle said they would like to be our travelling partner in the journey to the cloud.
Mark Stevenson – Reluctant Futurist
Autonomous DB Democracy is broken. We have fake options
Experience AI-Powered Oracle Integration to Connect Your Applications, Data, and API (Vikas Anand / Kulvinder Hari / Mauro Giancaspro)
Garner says 30% of CIOs will invest in AI
You cannot start your journey to the cloud without transformation. Companies want to take their CX/HCM/ERP and make them better cloud.
ENAV is the Italian Air Navigation Service Provider for civil air traffic.
The monitor over 6000 flights per day during summer.
Mission:
- Safety
- Efficiency
- Customer Oriented practice
Three Modern integration Trends
- Robotic Process Automation
- ML Recommendations
- Data Streaming
Steps: Application Integration / Process Automation / Integration Insight
Data Streaming and Integration
The Co-Op used Capgemini to update their recruitment system (Taleo). It was initially a long and tedious recruitment process with poor feedback and negative experience.
The solution was an API-led Integration solution that delivers:
-Simple and self=service UI to address store recruitment needs
Omnichannel support
Single sign-on
Through the fog: What matters in the age of disruption – Lord
A very disruptive age. Age of seasons, like Xi, Trump, Putin.
Brexit is almost at the same level as presidents.
We see time after time financial markets disconnected with the political time.
Asia is more positive than NA and Europe
Day 2 – Thursday, 17th January
Morning Anchor Keynotes Featuring Mark Hurd, CEO, Oracle (Leo Johnson / Mark Hurd / Steve Daheb / Tony Mather / Luke Halliday / Stefan Maczkowski)
Leo Johnson – PwC – DIsruption Lead
Talking about the future. Skip the Brexit, get some insight about alternative vs official future (?)
Take an innovation as driverless cars. Is this gonna happen? Yes. Stuff like Elon Musk hyperloop. Can it happen? Yes, not sure. Vertical take off and landing. Passenger taking off? Yes, maybe.
Synthetic biology. Living longer? Mmmm. He would like to roll 4 different scenarios
-Local Hero
-Rise of the machines
-Survival of the fittest
-Global rationing
Who are the winners? Who owns it? Can it concentrate the power to small amount of people or decentralised?
Talks about the example of a driver-less. He said he experienced a driver-less car. This is a DIY driver-less car that started driving smoothly for the first 250 meters and then changed lanes and started aiming to a waste truck. Required manual overtake.
Went to the ministry of transport. What is it going to happen?
Step 1-Driver less car
2-Fully automate economy
3-Global universal income
4-Global world for a more seamless migration
If we end in a highly innovative, centralised world, it doesn’t end well (Rise of the machines)
What was success built on? Efficiency, economies of scale. But now it is changing. Now the margins are very low.
He mentioned 4 scenarios, but thinks the best is the 4th one, according to him at least. What about micro-solutions like micro-banking, micro-printing to help the poorest of the poor. Visions of increasing productivity for the poor by using IoT/AI?etc. Away from mass production to what, local hero? Apparently. Yeah he wants innovators with IoT
We choose what do we value? Use the tech to develop the future. not just the official
Mark Hurd – CEO – Accelerating Growth in the Cloud
He couldn’t make it because of the government shutdown
Today’s discussion:
1-Current macro trends
2-Acceleration of cloud adoption
3-What’s next after cloud
4-Customers and success in the cloud
5-New predictions
He explains geo-politics impacts for business and technology. This has been split in 2:
1-Company IT Spend
2-Consumer IT Send
Company IT spend is mostly maintenance
He compared defense budged in US vs China. While the US spends more, percentage wise china spends more in virtual defense.
Data is key asset for business to own, analyse, use and secure
Prediction: cloud adoption is moving faster than predicted
Cloud is accelerating / Cloud is core /Cloud is foundational to modern business.
He is highly convinced that cloud is the way to go. He said that the idea of the business model initially was to buy pieces of work from different parts, trying it to glue it together. Now, 25 years in time, that has turned into a very difficult thing to maintain, configure, and so on.
In Oracle’s model, they have one OS, one model to configure. He thinks that it is why it is accelerating, growing, so on.
What it is next.?
Cloud foundation + AI + Increased Productivity and Innovation
-Automation will reduce time to complete tasks
-Automation will lead to reduction in maintenance cost
-Automation will lead to the creation of higher value jobs
-Companies will build new engagement models
Business applications with AI
The idea is to automate the apps.
What about improving the ERP with reports in excel?
Or HCM with improving screening candidates?
What about SCM managers manually tracking the shipment of goods? (Blockchain)
And finally CX, what if phone-support time on customers issues could be avoided all together with a chatbot?
Prediction: by 2025 all cloud apps will include AI. AI will be pervasive.
By 2025, 85% of interactions with customers will be automated – Customer experience is fundamentally changing
By 2025, AI will power 85% of all customer interactions
60% of the IT jobs have not been invented yet (but will be by 2025)
Summary: better business, better IT.
-Cloud is irrefutable and foundational
-Next in cloud is accelerated productivity and innovation
-AI and other technologies will be integrated features
-Autonomous database software will reduce cost and reduce risk
—————Flip the 80/20 Barrier and Lean to Innovation———————–
This means, stop spending time in maintenance and more in innovation!
Steve Daheb – Senior Vice President, Oracle Cloud
He presented a panel of customers using Oracle Cloud
Tony Mather – CIO – AWE
Joined AWE 2 years ago. Government owned, contract operated. They have a 25 years contract. Government owns the asset and contractors run the factory.
Technology is a key part in the business. And also security. But they still have the cloud.
If done well, they believe that working on the cloud can be same or even more secure than on-prem.
Work they do in apps and platform is helping this for them.
He was the official EMEA CIO of the year at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco last year
Luke Halliday – Director Application Services – Wood
An 11 billion dollar, 60k employees multinational.
We want to use SaaS software, and quickly scale. They recognize to deploy software quickly. How to help drive cultural change, using new/different software? Cloud is a great solution for this.
They are running a 6 year programme, over 100 million usd. They’ve been rolling out eBS for many years. They can’t afford disabling that. What did they do? Use a hybrid approach. A major driver for them. Oracle understood that, and it has been a recognition on the last couple of OpenWorld that it can take around 10 years. The ability to take part of the cloud and integrate that to the on-prem integration has helped them a lot. Where did they get value from deploying a cloud module? Driven by the integration programme. They don’t have a lot of global systems. But they chose the HCM module because it is global, because they have massive amount of people.
They are doing lots of work in the data, like entity rationalization. They drive value to the company by clearing out the data (Not sure about this)
After HCM, they will start to look other modules. Probably Finance there. What is driving the business strategy? What is bringing more value?
Stefan Maczkowski – Head of Data Strategy – AVIVA
They have Exadata. They are migrating that to OCI. They’ve created AVIVA quantum which is like a hub for all their data scientist / data engineers. Things like cloud management suite is helping them.
How do they take these skills? AI. He said not all customers like that, but the ones that do use AVIVA Plus.
Enabling Effortless Interactions – How Chatbots and Voice Assistants Change CX Forever (Anne Marie Forsyth/ Sara Eklund / Javier García del Rio / Mathias Askholm / Richard Boxall)
They talked about how chatbots and virtual assistants are helping the keeping them young, healthy, fresh. Once they get out of ours, they can address this with a Virtual Assistant
The idea for Mathias was to tailor made some responses. Improving the chat bot so it does not only answer the basic questions
.Anne Marie made an interesting point in: why would you need a human for answering mundane things?
Richard said that on any process you define, there is a point where the person comes in place. Because then you get frustration.
Mathias said not to use tech as replace work, but to improve it. He said sometimes young people is ashamed about asking basic questions, so they would rather talk to a chatbot to get informed and THEN talk to a person.
Javier said that he has a panic button for disabled. He thinks he can extrapolate that to chat bots.
Mathias said that the expectation with the chatbox sometimes is higher than with a human being.
Cedacri & REPLY – Predictive Analytics for Data Driven Banking (Francesco Coccia / Davide Mari )
Cedraci is the main Italian operator in outsourcing services for financial institution. Cedacri is the third Italian bank based on the number of users.
Data is the heart of these days (?)
What does data driven banking? Torture data long enough and it will confess to anything
Transform Data confessions in business value
Pillars:
Data Driven Decisions / real Time reactions / Customer Loyalty / Value Creation
The whole platform is Big Data Appliance This acts as its data lake. There they perform behavioural Alerts, Marketing automation, machine learning library and data science & analytics platform.
The data lake is fed mainly form a Mainframe, according to three models:
Batch flows
Download from the Infocenter system
Real time alignment in Change Data Capture
Other sources contribute to enrich the data lake:
Open data
Ingestion process:
Data storage on HDFS
Data Quality controls using Spark
Execution of elaborations / calculation of KPIs through Spark
Mapping prepared data on a Hive layer
Sometimes data stored in Impala
A series of behavioural alerts used by managers in their daily work with customers are calculated on a daily basis. Strategy: able to probably identify risks or business opportunities and be able to act accordingly with omnichannel strategies. Alerts are calculated by applying specific algorithms to the data lake and feed the front end tools through a series of services exposed. Examples:
Click on banner
Multi-Banking alarm
Variations of customer segment
Today they have 24 alerts that are calculated daily on the data lake
SNAP is the real-time decision engine used for the inbound marketing campaign. It works with an Event/Condition/Action paradigm
SNAP is activated when an EVENT occurs.
Machine learning part: taking advantage of data lake, they use spark notebooks, R and a set of algorithms in continuous enrichment and evolution. Example: Smart Targeting
It is a decision support algorithm based on different attributes (personal, income, geographical, behavioural) in order to identify customers who may be interested in a personal loan.
The algorithm also estimates the duration and most suitable amount for each individual customer identified in the target.
Enhancing your data with Oracle Analytics Cloud
How can Oracle get you there? It provides a very comprehensive platform. So basic reporting to what-if models, to self-service analytics
Product Strategy Pillars:
Expand Insight Consumption – Conversational Interfaces to interact, Analyse and Act on insights
Deeper and Relevant Insight – Connecting People, Machines and Data
Accelerate Time to insight – Complete Platform for Data Driven Innovation
The Analytics Industry Waves was Centralised (Stronger Governance) / Self Service (Improved User Productivity) / Augmented (insight-driven Business)
Act on Best Information:
Machine learning analyzes and explains any attribute
Automatically see what drives your results
Easily identify and analyze key segments of behaviour
Discover anomalies where data is not aligned with expected patterns
Interact with the outcome
What drives attrition? You can get examples of basic facts, key drivers, etc
It also has the ability to enrich data automatically:
Semantic Profiling and Type discovery
-Deep data profiling
The idea is to get the right tool for the job.
Move and improve is a good option for the on-premises to cloud
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Drop-in Labs – 25+ Labs – Laptops Provided
We visited the drop-in laps. They were free at the time of the event. Now some of them cost $10 on https://ocitraining.qloudable.com/
The labs allow you to create processes/environments using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure technology. They range from beginner to advanced and they all take between 15 minutes and 1 hour.
Some interesting things you can do:
- Creating a Virtual Cloud Network
- Auditing OCI
- Reserve a Public IP
- Create a docker registry
- Deploy Infrastructure using Terraform
- Configure dyamic CPU scaling in Autonomous Transaction Processing instance
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