PERFECTING THE CLOUD RECIPE FOR SUCCESS

It is no secret that the cloud has democratized access to technology previously reserved for only the largest of organizations, leveling the playing field. With it, the role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) has changed.

No longer is the CIO’s core focus that of ‘keeping the lights on’, and ensuring that technical operations function optimally. Today, the CIO is a partner to the business, driving innovation at DevOps speed and scale, and playing a key role in supporting the company’s go-to-market strategy.

Conceptualizing the perfect cloud approach is not an easy task, especially in today’s fast-paced business environment. Too often, business leaders spend a lot of time debating configurations, especially when deploying enterprise applications – only to find that the business has changed by the time they are done.

Thus, in this new cloud-driven world, the imperative is to move at the speed of business. This will ensure that organizations adjust and move beyond failing fast, to embrace “succeeding fast”.

A walk in the clouds

In the pre-cloud days, IT infrastructure deployment was a tedious and complex process. Monolithic applications meant dealing with multiple vendors and lengthy provisioning timeframes. Today, with the evolution of the cloud, ‘outsourcing’ software (Software-as-a-Service) to be delivered and managed by the experts, while you focus on running your business, is becoming the mainstream.

If a business realizes the need for additional computing firepower as a result of dynamic shifts in the industry landscape or a requirement to play less in the datacentre space, that’s where Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) comes into the picture. After the computing resources needed are determined, businesses can easily look at scalable resources, instead of being stuck with constantly underutilized capacities.

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) forms another critical component of cloud infrastructure, including components such as a database, analytics, integration, mobile, security, etc., that can be consumed on-demand.  Not only is the approach time efficient, but these cloud stacks can also help with building the extensible platform needed to support strategic business outcomes by lowering entry barriers and accelerating the go-to-market.

The hybrid cloud platform – a CIO’s key to cloud success

Achieving successful outcomes from the cloud increasingly involves taking a hybrid approach to deployment. Organizations need to be able to utilize different forms of cloud solutions that can best cater to their requirements while simultaneously meeting regulatory benchmarks, including data governance and evolving security regulations in the markets that they operate in.

The financial services industry, for example, has specific rules about how data is collected, used and stored. Oracle Cloud at Customer helps organizations in the sector enjoy the benefits of a public cloud, while allowing them to stay in control of their data and where it is located.

The secret in the “sauce”

Today, several vendors offer cloud stacks and solutions. So, how can CIOs choose the right option for their business, especially in a rapidly changing market that is moving beyond the cloud to incorporate advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and automation?

This is giving rise to a whole new category of services. This new autonomous cloud is underpinned by three core tenets; being self-driving (where it literally runs itself, eliminating considerable human labor by self-tuning, self-patching, and self-scaling), self-securing (including intelligent threat detection, remediation and automatic encryption) and self-repairing (enabling the system to keep running even as patching and maintenance takes place).

This new cloud platform infrastructure has the potential to positively disrupt business models - enabling reduced risk, lower costs, and maximization of a business’ most important asset, their data. In the longer run, the resulting ‘autonomous organization’ has the potential to reach an ideal state where manual processes for running day-to-day operations and maintaining core IT systems can be completed without human interference. Instead, manpower can be redeployed toward value-added roles, enabling companies to redirect revenue and focus on innovating amid changing market dynamics.

The Journey Forward

Already we have moved far in the journey to the cloud. Some years ago, even established companies were wary of the cloud; today, cloud acceptance and adoption continues to grow.

Witnessing shifts within its business and customer demographics, driven by the rising tide of consumer e-commerce, Indonesia’s leading express logistics provider, JNE is introducing the Oracle Management Cloud to manage innovative applications, including a Business Reporting System for e-commerce customers. This enables end users to see where their items are at each stage of their journey and provide JNE with end-to-end visibility of all transactions to ensure performance and response times for deliveries.

Evidently, this new approach truly represents a new era of IT, where things are finally made simple, business leaders have a clear view of all applications and most importantly, glean actionable insights from data. Modern CIOs are now leading the charge in the way forward for their organizations with this new, enterprise-grade cloud that enables them to focus on supporting business strategy and leave the techie ‘how to’ to the cloud service providers.

In this new form, the cloud won’t just be ‘as a service’, but at your service – providing unprecedented access and ease of use to CIOs and their businesses. Cloud and other transformational technologies will be further demonstrated and discussed at Oracle OpenWorld Asia, the industry's most important business and technology conference, happening in Singapore from March 26 – 27. Registration is now open: https://www.oracle.com/sg/openworld/ 

This article is written by Chin Ying Loong, VP, Cloud Platform, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines 

Acer Announces AIoT Edge Computing Device with Support for Amazon Kinesis Video Streams

Acer today announced the aiSage, an Artificial Intelligence + Internet of Things (AIoT) edge computing device with a built-in camera. The aiSage offers a powerful live-streaming analytics solution for businesses looking to streamline and improve their operations through real-time business intelligence. It supports Amazon Kinesis Video Streams, a solution that makes it easy to securely stream video from connected devices to Amazon Web Services (AWS) for analytics, machine learning (ML), playback, and other processing, and AWS IoT.

“The aiSage is an AIoT edge computing device that collects and analyzes data to provide real-time business intelligence,” said Maverick Shih, President of BYOC Smart Products Business, Acer Inc. “We are excited to be cooperating with AWS to both provide seamless support for Amazon Kinesis Video Streams and offer scalable and secure provisioning of devices through AWS IoT.”

The aiSage is a commercial-grade edge computing device optimized for AI applications. It has an integrated CPU, GPU, high-definition camera, and wired and wireless connectivity options, all packed in a low profile design that blends in with surroundings. It supports the MXNet framework for deep learning, which produces lightweight neural network model representations that can run on edge devices like aiSage and process data remotely in real-time.

Currently, it can take retail chains days or weeks for their demographic or shopper information to be consolidated and analyzed, with the data’s value deteriorating as it ages. With the aiSage’s edge computing capabilities, real-time metadata tagging via integrated connectivity can securely stream video to services such as AWS with Amazon Kinesis Video Streams for analytics, ML, and other processing.

Customers using aiSage can quickly connect and manage their cameras and stream video to their AWS account using the new AWS IoT Camera Connector Quickstart. The AWS IoT Camera Connector Quickstart is a new solution that automates the discovery, provisioning, and connection of cameras and their streaming video content to the company’s AWS account using AWS IoT Core and Amazon Kinesis Video Streams.

The aiSage will be distributed globally through AOPEN, a member of the Acer Group specializing in integrated solutions for commercial and retail use. It will be on display at this year’s AWS re:Invent event from November 26th to 30th in Las Vegas.

Connecting the Dots, Connecting the Data: How Cloud Delivers Exceptional Customer Experiences

It takes months to find a customer and only seconds to lose one, or so the saying goes. These days, however, it might be more like milliseconds.

Thanks to on-demand information and services available anytime, anywhere, customers are more empowered than ever before and have sky-high expectations. If your customer is bored or impatient, confused or frustrated, for even just a second, there are a myriad of other choices they can turn to. Gartner predicts by 2020, poor customer experiences will destroy nearly a third of digital business projects, and PwC reports that 73% of customers now point to experience as an important factor in their purchasing decision.

In this context, providing a personalized, seamless, predictive customer experience is a core pillar of business success – and the only way to achieve that is by connecting every part of the enterprise and making sure customers are at the center of all decision-making.

Connection and integration help businesses answer that all-important question – how do I maintain a single view of my customer? The average consumer generates a huge amount of data every day, across a vast range of channels; and in fact, an estimated 90% of the data that now exists was created in the past two years. On social, mobile, desktop and connected TV, consumers are creating masses of data based on their interests, purchases, location and brand sentiment. But when all that data remained isolated in business silos, the view of the customer becomes fragmented.

Uniquely, cloud applications enable a single point of view on customer data. Through the cloud, businesses can tear down silos so that more customer data is collected and shared, in an open and usable way, with everyone in the organization. The integration extends from the frontlines of the business to help marketers create more personalized engagements, all the way to the back-office. Finally, data can be quickly and effectively used to streamline interlocking ERP processes across the supply chain, manufacturing, logistics and more, as well as to inform broader strategic initiatives.

Customer-centricity isn’t just about what customers can see – it’s a way an entire organization works that starts from the inside out. When the existing business environment is integrated and interoperable, without the perils of siloed technology and thinking, continual innovation is finally possible.

Bold organizations are setting an example of improving the customer experience at the front office and driving new innovation at the back office, to go above and beyond for customers in a competitive landscape. They’re doing this with investments in the cloud so that they can use data in a more robust and connected way.

ZALORA, the largest e-commerce fashion company in Southeast Asia, is an organization that illustrates how the right back-end system can drive new levels of customer loyalty. It was important for ZALORA to have a tool that helps them listen and respond in real-time to each personalized interaction with the customer, extracting the data that matters in customer interactions. With Oracle Marketing Cloud, ZALORA has moved from a batch and blast model to become an orchestrator of personalized conversations, where they are able to speak to customers in a relevant and tailored manner. Some of the benefits achieved by ZALORA from Oracle Marketing Cloud include the halving of time needed for a lead conversation to capture a large customer base, resulting in a multifold increase in revenue.

Eco-friendly pest control service, Killem Pest is another fantastic example of a company that is using the connective power of the cloud to provide the best customer experience. Through the Oracle Service Cloud, Killem Pest is able to collate requests from customers or potential new leads via a user-friendly portal, email or on the phone. This allows them to effectively manage to resource across scheduled assignments and locations in real time with their Oracle Field Service Cloud, and handle feedback in a proactive manner.

It’s a similar story for Australian airline Jetstar, which is currently leveraging the cloud to enact a company-wide transformation aimed at better engagement with customers on their own terms. A cloud data management platform is helping to provide a more robust, single view on customers so that the business can speak to them as individuals; in the right place and at the right time. Recently, teams were able to unite an email activity with display advertising in order to reach a disengaged customer segment. The result? A growth of up to 70 percent on incremental revenue.

Connected information is the fuel that drives customer-centricity. When businesses connect all the data and all the dots across the organization, they can deliver rich internal insight and provide truly excellent experiences for customers. The next wave of customer service is already here, bringing significantly enhanced experiences to customers and re-defining which companies will come out on top. 

Huawei CloudAIR Solution Awarded as ‘Innovative Network Solution of the Year for Connectivity’ at IMC 2018

Huawei’s CloudAIR solution was awarded by the "Innovative Network Solution of the Year for connectivity", presented by The Ministry of Communications (MoC, India) and Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI).

This is in high recognition of Huawei's efforts to address the challenges facing air interface resources on mobile broadband networks. CloudAIR uses cloud technologies to centrally schedule and efficiently utilize air interface resources, enabling operators to optimize resource utilization, unleash network potential, and deliver an overall better user experience.

Huawei’s CloudAIR solution was awarded by the "Innovative Network Solution of the Year for connectivity" at IMC 2018

India boasts a large communications market with 1.1 billion mobile network subscribers. As the Indian government continuously promotes a "Digital India" project, its nationwide terminal penetration rate is on the rise. In addition, reduced tariffs as a result of fierce industry competition also contribute to the rapid development of data services. Video, social media, e-commerce, and many other services have successfully permeated into every facet of people's lives.

On the other hand, the number of existing 2G/3G subscribers remains high while 4G services are in full swing. Indian operators are in urgent need of getting more spectrum resources and expanding bandwidth. However, the spectrum resources are so expensive and scarce that operators find it rather challenging to increase revenue while slashing the cost of operation.

Huawei's CloudAIR multi-RAT spectrum sharing solution can introduce an efficient method to address the spectrum challenges faced by current operators. In addition to guaranteeing the experience of GSM and UMTS users on the network, the solution is also capable of coordinating spectrum resources for LTE users, facilitating the introduction of LTE technologies. It not only helps slash the spectrum cost by over US$ 100 million and the site addition requirement by 20%–30%, but also enhances user experience of data services and increases service revenue.

CloudAIR has been deployed by a number of operators in multiple states throughout India and will be promoted to more cities and suburbs. It is believed to be an ideal answer to the high spectrum and bandwidth requirements brought by a sudden upsurge in LTE services. Up till now, the CloudAIR solution has been commercially applied on more than 80 networks worldwide, with the number of deployments expected to exceed 100 by the end of 2018.

Oracle Press Release: Oracle and LinkedIn Collaborate to Improve Candidate and Employee Experience

Oracle and LinkedIn today announced that they are working together to help HR professionals meet the shifting demands of the talent economy. A series of new integrations between Oracle’s Human Capital Management Cloud (Oracle HCM Cloud) and Taleo Enterprise Edition, and LinkedIn, will help HR teams attract, engage and retain employees by growing their talent pool, improving the candidate experience, enhancing internal mobility and increasing career development opportunities.

“The world of work is rapidly changing, and this is creating new opportunities and challenges for talent leaders,” said Scott Roberts, Vice President of Business Development, LinkedIn. “We are excited to be working with Oracle to create better solutions to make hiring and developing talent as seamless and effective as possible.”

Technology continues to transform the global talent marketplace with the rise of automation and the shrinking shelf life of skills. To successfully manage these changes and address escalating recruitment costs and increasing employee turnover, HR teams need to swiftly evolve their strategies and technologies. The new integrations between LinkedIn and Oracle HCM Cloud and Taleo Enterprise Edition address this need by enabling HR teams to take a holistic view of their talent’s experience, skills, and career aspirations in order to achieve a meaningful alignment between each employee’s job responsibilities and an organization’s overall business objectives. 

“The rapidly changing global talent market is forcing organizations across industries to rethink how they attract, engage and retain employees,” said Nagaraj Nadendla, Group Vice President, Product Development, Oracle. “Navigating these changes is one of the biggest challenges organizations face today and requires HR teams to take a holistic view of the candidate and employee experience. Working closely with LinkedIn, we are uniquely placed to help HR teams meet heightened candidate and employee expectations by combining future-proofed Oracle HCM Cloud and Taleo Enterprise platforms with one of the world’s largest talent marketplaces.”  

The new integrations between Oracle HCM Cloud and LinkedIn include:

•  Talent Profile Import: Helps organizations enhance internal talent mobility by enabling employees to choose to import key elements of their LinkedIn profiles into their Oracle HCM Cloud Talent Profile. 
• Recommended Matches and Embedded Search: Helps organizations streamline recruitment by enabling LinkedIn Recruiter seat holders to search LinkedIn members and see those that best match a job requisition or project within Oracle Recruiting Cloud and Taleo Enterprise Edition.
• Referral Recommendations: Improves the candidate experience by enabling candidates to apply for a job via Oracle Recruiting Cloud or Taleo Enterprise Edition and identify and contact (via InMail) their LinkedIn connections who can best refer them for that job.
• Recruiter System Connect: Provides a seamless and efficient recruiter experience by surfacing transactional recruiting data, from both Oracle Recruiting Cloud and Taleo Enterprise Edition, as well as LinkedIn, in LinkedIn Recruiter.
• Deeper Integration with Oracle Learning Cloud: Increases career development opportunities through access to LinkedIn Learning courses, automatic course catalog integrations, and up-to-date insight on learner engagement within Oracle Learning Cloud.

Part of Oracle Cloud Applications, Oracle HCM Cloud enables HR professionals to simplify the complex in order to meet the increasing expectations of an ever-changing workforce and business environment. By providing a complete and powerful platform that spans the entire employee lifecycle, Oracle HCM Cloud helps HR professionals deliver superior employee experience, align people strategy to evolving business priorities, and cultivate a culture of continuous innovation.

About Oracle

The Oracle Cloud offers complete SaaS application suites for ERP, HCM and CX, plus best-in-class database Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) from data centers throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information about Oracle (NYSE:ORCL), please them at oracle.com.

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Legacy Supply Chains Aren’t Fit for Purpose in the Age of Customer

Businesses in Asia-Pacific face what is arguably the most critical customer experience imperative in the world. This is because here, 71 percent of consumers make online purchases[1] and investment is e-commerce is on the rise. Meanwhile, consumers are becoming more demanding: 76 percent of consumers in the Asia Pacific region now say that customer service should be a company’s top priority[2]. Businesses across Asia must, therefore, do all in their power to raise the game and create winning customer experiences that keep people coming back for more.

Business leaders in the region today are challenged with delivering differentiated customer experiences; leading many to rethink the way they design their supply chain operations. These organizations must cope with exponential demand, and supply chains need to become much faster and precise.

As businesses in Asia set out to meet these challenges, 2018 looks set to be a critical year, with 94% of supply chain leaders saying that digital transformation will fundamentally change supply chains this year[3]. Moving quickly, business leaders in Asia are investing in digital tools to obtain real-time demand data, shorten replenishment cycle times, optimize deliveries and predict future demand. The rest will be left behind.

Who exactly are these leaders? There are many to choose from: the Asia Pacific market brings together the right combination of logistics and e-commerce expertise required to drive breakthrough innovation. Where this innovation happens, customer experiences are taken to a new height.

Supply chain transformation in action

Take SpeedFactory by Adidas: a concept that’s making its way to Shanghai and Tokyo. SpeedFactory uses advanced 3D printing technology from Carbon, Adidas’ supply chain partner. The printers allow athletes to order hyper-personalized running shoes with unique soles that are tailored to individuals’ weights, foot contours, and running styles. The shoe design even incorporates data that takes account of conditions in different cities, thereby meeting the needs of runners in the exact environment in which they’re running.

By rethinking its supply chain, Carbon has enabled something special: marketing on a truly individual level. In part, it has been able to do this through advanced cloud applications for areas such as customer service, procurement, inventory, order management, manufacturing, and supply chain. The cloud has made it easier for Adidas to interact with a global supply chain in an economical way – essential as it ramps up production with global brands.

But it’s not only consumer brands that are enhancing the customer experience through supply chain transformation. Take Bac Ky Logistics. This Vietnamese logistics company has embraced automation to deliver a stronger overall customer experience. The company has completely automated the scheduling of transportation and delivery management; in the process enhancing transparency and speed of service for customers. The company has also used advanced, data-driven cloud applications to better visualize its supply chain, logistics, and trade information in real-time. This has helped it optimize resourcing and reduce the number of empty containers.

Other organizations are looking at the power of supply chain transformation to play an integral role in the move to digital. Thai company Tipco Asphault manufactures and distributes asphalt products servicing road construction, maintenance, and paving industries. Having launched its ‘iChange’ strategy to transform the organization to respond to the imperatives of digital and industry 4.0, it needed a cloud specialist to help modernize its supply chain and thereby enhance the customer experience. Tipco’s strategy centres on overhauling its IT system across key business units including management, purchasing, production process, transportation, distribution, sales, and after-sales services.

Adrian Johnston is the Senior Vice President of Cloud (SaaS) Applications at Oracle Asia Pacific

Supply chains in the digital age

These companies are disrupting the supply chain to drive innovation. They are doing this by using data to better join up their back- and front-offices, influence product, and service development enable hyper-personalization and drive efficiency.

According to Bain & Co, companies that integrate digital technologies into their supply chain can quickly improve service levels while cutting costs up to 30 percent[4]. Agile supply chain operations are, therefore, critically important to ensuring front-office innovations are a success – but most companies are not yet rebuilding their back-office functions at a fast-enough rate. In fact, according to research from Accenture and HfS, over 50 percent of enterprises say it takes months or even years for their support business functions to make changes in response to evolving business needs[5]. The reasons given for this include siloed internal processes, which approximately 80 percent of organizations cited as barriers preventing them from achieving their business goals.

Successful companies build a short-term roadmap with concrete initiatives that will start delivering benefits quickly and provide flexibility in reaching long-term supply chain goals.

We believe the cloud roadmap, with Software-as-a-Service for supply chain operations as the core, answers. The cloud brings together the disparate data, systems, and partners that comprise supply chains and facilitates their integration across the enterprise. As such, the cloud provides the basis through which back-office operations can be made agile rapidly, and with minimal disruption to the business. When you start adding AI and IoT led business applications to the supply chain operations, this transforms businesses into intelligent enterprise further fuelling innovation and customer experience differentiation.

Act now

Begin by debating questions at your next board meeting - What will business in Asia look like in five years, and what supply chain capabilities you need? Organisations that are leading the way in the adoption of cloud and data technologies are making e-commerce faster and more personalized than ever. Other innovators are using data from manufacturing and post-sales to iteratively improve their services and create additional revenue streams through new business models. The supply chain is a fundamental driver of success in the digital age and all organizations need to act now by looking at how their own supply chain is set up and whether it is still fit for purpose

The Rise of the Autonomous Revolution

Anxiety has been named the modern plague of our time, with much of the ‘angst’ driven by the impact of modern technology - and with the dramatic rise in the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation in business, it feels like this condition has spread to the workplace.  Certainly, the arrival of any new technology that promises to change the way we do things has always created tension in society; think of the introduction of machines during the Industrial Revolution. So how concerned should we, in fact, be about this new development?

Perhaps, if history is anything to go by, less so than we currently are. While new technologies seemed at first to render the traditional workforce obsolete, new jobs and new industry segments were created in the long run. Indeed, productivity-raising technologies – like AI and automation – actually transforms the original job scope of traditional jobs, up-leveling and creating new forms of employment.

The autonomous revolution

Today, we see artificial intelligence, combined with machine learning, automation technologies and massive compute power, leading the way towards the Autonomous Revolution. This sees machines for the first time, increasingly capable of accomplishing activities that were once considered beyond their capabilities, such as making judgments calls, sensing emotion or even driving.

In effect, autonomous is the next level of automation, in that automated solutions still continually need users to intervene and dictate their operations – which itself is labor-intensive. True autonomous solutions can, once powered on, fully operate on their own to make decisions that are not only the most efficient for the user but because of the use of AI, might even suggest a better outcome than humans alone might come up with.

Think of a self-driving car. You key in the destination and allow the car to guide you across the best routes, navigate traffic, get you to your destination, and maneuver a difficult parking - all in time for your next meeting. The car eliminates the need to drive, or even learn driving as a skill, plus the risks associated with human driving errors.

The Philippines and the Autonomous Revolution

So how might the autonomous era impact the Philippines? The country is already known as a Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) market, with this sector being a major employer and key source of income for the nation[1].

However, recently job openings for fresh graduates in the industry have shrunk, with the rise of automation seen as one of the contributing factors[2]. A further estimated 43,000 jobs are also expected to be lost from 2016 to 2022 due to artificial intelligence[3].

Not all is lost though. Similar to how the Industrial Revolution brought about the creation of new jobs, the Autonomous Revolution too requires a new breed of employees. Employers and government officials need to rethink their employee engagement approach – providing employees with the necessary avenues to upskill.

The autonomous enterprise, here to help, not replace

It is also key to note that the technology itself might help the transition, after all, its aim is to augment human skills, and help free them up to do higher value work, not replace.

Imagine what the Autonomous Enterprise could mean for the average BPO employee:

He gets in to work and his emails are already sorted in order of priority with certain miscellaneous emails immediately relegated to the spam folder and some emails answered with a previously registered response. He is able to start the work day fresh, without having to go through a blanket of emails.

A spreadsheet with customers’ details – prioritized based on the last interaction – is highlighted to him, advising him on the next tasks, and recommendations on the approach to take. Instead of manually finding answers to a customer’s query, the BPO employee is able to take a step back, analyze the recommendations shared by the Autonomous Enterprise, answer the customer’s query and follow up with recommendations on next steps. This turns his role from being process oriented to a consultative one.

When a meeting overruns, the Autonomous Enterprise immediately reschedules the next appointment or arranges a quicker ride to ensure the employee gets to the meeting on time. It reminds him of things that he needs to look into, such as peer appraisals and team bonding sessions, pulls out a list of articles on social and traditional media that he might find interesting to mention to the customer and automatically scans the corporate IT system and downloads the latest security patches available.

It means less time on manual tasks that most employees are not interested in, less chance for human error as a result of tiring labor-intensive work and more time for enrichment and collaboration, instead of being concerned on the nuts and bolts of operations. It also means a change of job scope, and an opportunity to upgrade oneself to the next level of the job.

Oracle is the pioneer of Autonomous technologies for the Enterprise. We have introduced capabilities into our Cloud Platform Services that lower operational cost, reduce the risk of human error and accelerate innovation, and get predictive insights. For example, the recently launched Oracle Autonomous Database does not require human intervention for mundane tasks, such as patching, turning and protecting the data from security vulnerabilities.

We are only at the start of the Autonomous Revolution. To capture the full benefits jump on board early.  Start with deployment for some non-mission critical workloads and see how you can rapidly reskilling workers to benefit from it. Policymakers also need to collaborate with the business community to help the employers and employees of tomorrow while they are in transition, enabling them to boost productivity and stay relevant.

Chris Chelliah is the Group Vice President and Chief Architect, Core Technology and Cloud, Oracle Asia Pacific

*This is Press Release

Five Ways to Have Artificial Intelligent Tools Do the Heavy Lifting This Year

Success in the next era of retail won’t come from adding the latest widget to your site, and it’s certainly not in low prices and free shipping. Success will come down to the ability to move and innovate faster. While moving to a fully SaaS-based commerce platform and ecosystem will guarantee greater agility, the reality is that may be a multi-year process for some retailers.

So what can online retailers do to make a difference right now? It is time to let artificial intelligent (AI) tools do some heavy lifting this year.

There are a ton of options for when, where, and how to leverage AI, but for retailers looking for quick impact, here are five ways AI tools can help online retailers drive results across the shopping experience without the heavy lift:

1.      Innovate with Voice Command and Visual Search: By 2021, Gartner predicts that early adopter brands that redesign their websites to support visual and voice search will increase digital commerce revenue by 30%. With mobile devices, short attention spans and endless online options, getting on-site search right is more critical than ever. The good news is that new AI technologies, such as Visual Search and Voice Command, make search more engaging and effective at converting sales.

•       Visual search is about to take off in a big way thanks to strides in image recognition technologies and the growing number of mobile shoppers who prefer visuals. Retailers can essentially deliver faceted search results in a new, visual way by labeling product features, attributes, and names in images and videos. Pinterest now enables users to select an item in an image to surface similar items on Pinterest. Retailers Target and West Elm are experimenting here as well.

•       Voice command has become ubiquitous at home and on the go with Siri, Alexa, and Google. With advancements made in natural language processing (NLP), semantics and intent recognition, there’s a lot of exciting ways to experiment with voice-based assistance and order placement on retail mobile sites and apps. Start simple. Look at the most common shopper inquiries like order status, return policy, local store inventory and the ability to re-order items and check out via voice. Graduate to deliver on more complex use cases like searching and comparing products, asking for personalized recommendations based on preferences and history, and placing products on hold at local stores.

2.      Leverage Big Data: Retailers spend a lot of money to acquire customers via SEM, SEO, content marketing and social with murky ROI results. AI tools that crunch customer data present new options though. Instead of waiting for shoppers to discover you, retail marketers can now discover consumers. Third-party data audiences leverage billions of global IDs, trillions of dollars in transactional data and tens of thousands of pre-built audiences that span demographic, online and offline behaviors. Insight from these mega data sets means you can reach exactly who you want to.

One business that is reaping the benefits of big data and AI is Carousell, one of the world's largest mobile classifieds marketplaces. By integrating Oracle's Responsys with its AI tools, Carousell was able to roll out dynamic landing pages with personalized content based on users' past behavior or project behavior. Additionally, Carousell was also able to leverage Responsys' Link Tracking feature, which tracks where clicks on links come from, to achieve in-depth insights into the effectiveness of its social media marketing efforts. These valuable insights enable Carousell to create more relevant and personalized editorials for their users.

3.      Integrate AI in your mobile strategy: It’s getting harder than ever to engage consumers, deliver on what they want in the moment and turn them into a loyalist. Context is critical and AI tools provide that in a way humans can’t. As

63 percent of smartphone owners used their mobile devices to make holiday decisions this past season, mobile shopping is becoming a way of life. Mobile is a goldmine of contextual user information and the perfect place for retailers to seize micro-moments along the shopper’s journey. Recent data from Oracle Responsys from this past holiday season told us mobile SMS traffic went up 70% and mobile push rates increased 110% year-over-year. Shoppers want to hear from retailers and brands if it’s relevant and provides value. In mobile communications, use AI for personalized recommendations on products, local store events, offers and order updates to scale a personal relationship with your most valuable customers.

4.      Have chatbots initiate proactive chats: Chatbots are expected to be the top application of AI over the next five years, according to TechEmergence. AI-powered chatbots are not just a great way to scale service post-sale, but also during browsing and buying. Proactive service drives sales and chatbots are a great technology to initiate proactive conversations with customers that can alleviate concerns and offer solutions to common queries.

5.      Virtual Assistants can be your personal concierge: Leverage AI tools to make your most lucrative customer segments feel known and valued. Virtual Assistants (that use AI, speech recognition and loads of data) can serve as a personal concierge, helping loyal customers with purchase recommendations, education and customer service. Loyalty programs can also use AI to supercharge personalization. They can recommend products based on local weather conditions, hyper-personalized subscription services and tailored promotions based on what resonates with each customer specifically.

For more information on Oracle’s privacy policies with reference to our cloud solutions, please refer to the following link: https://www.oracle.com/legal/privacy/marketing-cloud-data-cloud-privacy-policy.html

The above article was made by Katrina Gosek, senior director, digital customer product strategy, Oracle.

Five Ways to Make your IT Cloud-Ready

Cloud Computing is increasingly the deployment model of choice for enterprise workloads, causing public cloud spend to grow at a double-digit rate with no sign of slowing down. The issue is that most companies realize they can't transition everything at once - even if they wanted to - leaving IDC to predict that 58.7 percent infrastructure spend in 2017 will stay in the data center.

Regardless, the pressure is on and companies can’t afford to sit back and wait. The rising incidence of cyberattacks is making many companies re-evaluate their position on cloud; a recent Oracle survey showed that companies with a higher level of cloud maturity and exposure have higher levels of confidence in their cyber security capabilities and ability to detect cyber threats, than those early in their cloud journey. 

In addition, organizations are striving to deliver innovation in unprecedented ways and, to support this, are looking for new ways of handling the increasing amount of data they are having to deal with every day.[1] It is therefore very important that organizations take into consideration ways to handle the increasing amount of data being transferred into their systems every day. Having said this, finding the right application on platforms suitable to your company’s needs is essential.[2] With business leaders pushing hard for cloud migration, how should IT leaders respond?

Plan for Tomorrow

There are a myriad of reasons for keeping applications in-house, such as regulatory compliance issues, security, data sovereignty requirements, the need for low latency, and use of custom legacy applications that won't run on public cloud platforms.

In many cases, what is needed is a cloud-ready architecture - including hardware operating systems, databases, and applications - that is consistent across on-premises and cloud environments. This will make it easier to transition when the time is right.

Mapping your cloud-ready journey: While the route will vary, depending on where an individual IT organization is starting, there are five typical use cases that describe the different requirements of each leg - and thus, the likely best path forward.

1. Streamline and modernize IT infrastructure

For a business without immediate plans to move to the cloud, but wants to streamline its infrastructure, pre-built converged infrastructure.

These modern systems that are architecturally compatible with those powering private cloud and public cloud services can deliver dramatic improvements in performance, availability, security, and efficiency while lowering operating costs, by replacing older, multi-vendor server, storage, and backup.

2. Accelerate time to value with appliances

Many IT organizations have to do more with less, and faster, to respond to competitive threats. In such situations, an appliance strategy can provide great benefit. Purpose built 'appliances' that are preconfigured to serve different purposes, such as to support databases, a private cloud environments, or big data workloads. They are easy to deploy and operate, requiring less time and fewer specialized IT skills.

3. Optimize and extend private cloud

For generic, noncritical workloads, many organizations first implement private cloud environments with the aim of lowering costs and achieving greater agility.

But most self-assembled, generic private clouds take months to build - decreasing agility - and require expensive personnel to build, tune, and manage.

Private cloud environments also often use virtualization software that may require expensive licenses and support contracts to run. Another challenge is that generic private clouds often treat all applications equally, they are not always appropriate for demanding and/or business-critical databases and applications.

One way to address these issues is to adopt purpose-built, cloud appliances that are consistent across environments, enabling organizations to implement a private cloud that is cost-optimized for generic applications and performance optimized for more critical applications. This provides an easy path to public or hybrid cloud, with unified management across environments.

4. Optimize and secure critical applications

For business-critical applications, in many cases, the infrastructure supporting them has been built over time, lags in modernization, and is an inconsistent mix of platforms.

The result is an overly complex environment that doesn't always deliver the required performance or security. A common solution is to employ high-end servers to optimize and ensure peak performance while improving efficiency with the highest security, whether implemented on-premises or in the cloud. Moving to a single platform will also bring cost savings and unified management.

5. Consolidate and protect data with advanced storage solutions

Finally, companies are facing data storage and protection challenges. With the explosion of data volumes, simply adding to an existing storage infrastructure is, in many cases, no longer affordable or cost-effective.

An alternative approach is to implement modern storage solutions engineered to address the risks of data loss and cut recovery times. These cloud-ready systems enable you to consolidate existing storage while ensuring the security of your data and dramatically improving performance.

Future

For each of these use cases, having cloud-ready systems that have equivalents in the public cloud can allow the public cloud to appear as a compatible extension of what already runs in your data center, making it easier to move when you're ready.

The most powerful, unified cloud solutions available that best match your licensed environment and will help you modernize, innovate, and be one step ahead in a digital world. Complete and integrated cloud services can now deliver unprecedented availability, performance, and security — potentially at a significantly lower cost.[3]

Even if you have no immediate plans to move to the cloud, it's a nice option to have. In the meantime, you're able to bring many benefits of the public cloud into your on-premises infrastructure. Wouldn't you like to be prepared for a cloud future?