Cloud Is Foundation
In conversation with Premalakshmi R, VP, Cloud Platform, Oracle India
Every enterprise in India, regardless of whether it is large or small, is increasingly adopting emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning. Inculcating digitisation in the day-to- day operations has become crucial to drive growth of an organisation. In an interview with us, Premalakshmi R, VP, Cloud Platform, Oracle India, sheds light on the adoption of emerging technologies in India, technologies that are gaining traction in the India market, and what Oracle has to offer for enterprises.
Can you tell us about the current state of cloud adoption by Indian enterprises ?
Cloud adoption is picking up pace in India and we’re seeing many enterprises rewiring their DNA to evolve into a cloud-first company. According to Gartner, investments in managed services and cloud infrastructure services in 2019 could account for nearly $6 billion, growing over 7% y- o-y. This also spans nearly 40 per cent of the end-user spending on IT services in India estimated at $15 billion. It’s exciting times ahead for enterprises looking to accelerate cloud innovation.
What is the rate of emerging technology adoption, such as AI/ML, by Indian businesses?
We believe that cloud is the foundation for taking full advantage of emerging technologies such AI/ML, blockchain or chatbots. In the last 6 months, more than 80% of our customer CXOs whom I’ve met, have expressed a keen interest in deploying AI/ML in some
form to make their business more efficient, agile and profitable. So, there’s definitely huge demand and it’s only now that businesses understand the full potential of AI/ML, and the incremental benefits it brings to the table.
Currently, customer engagement and employee experience (skill development, self-help) – via AI enabled chatbots and advanced analytics for realtime decision making – are two key areas where Indian businesses are deploying AI/ML extensively. The future looks even more promising. According to research by Accenture, AI could add a whopping $957 billion to the Indian economy by changing the nature of work to create better outcomes for businesses and society.
That said, it’s important to design a holistic AI/ ML strategy for your organisation, because with AI/ ML, the whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. The reason is quite simple – businesses have plenty of data and they would need better insights and outcomes using that data through a holistic lens.
Tell us something about technologies like Blockchain
Blockchain has tremendous potential for a market like India and can usher in a new transparency paradigm in the way business and trade is conducted. We’re already seeing numerous pilot projects underway by organisations in BFSI, energy, manufacturing, pharma, amongst others. While the technology is fully ready, building an ecosystem of like-minded parties is the key. Oracle is the technology strategy partner for one of the flagship blockchain projects that NITI Aayog is driving to tackle the problem of fake medicines, in association with Apollo and Strides Pharma. In this model, by scanning a bar code of every medicine package, an end consumer should be able to instantly get key information such as the date of production, the path of transport and date it reached the retailer, empowering the consumer to verify the authenticity of the medicine before buying.
The rise of chatbots is another big trend. Modern, digital enterprises are extensively using intelligent chatbots to better serve the younger, tech savvy consumers. Take consumer appliances major Bajaj Electricals, for instance. The company used Oracle’s intelligent bot service to design an intuitive bot for addressing service requests and other queries by end consumers via their website.
How is Oracle Autonomous Database driving innovation?
It’s important to design a holistic AI/ML strategy for your organisation, because with AI/ML, the whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. The reason is quite simple – businesses have plenty of data and they would need better insights and outcomes using that data through a holistic lens.
Oracle Autonomous Database is the world’s first and only self- driving, self-securing and self-repairing database. This is a new category of cloud service that we created – the next level of cloud innovation. It is one of our generational innovations, and in a very short time, has become the most successful new product introduction in our 40 year history. With cloud innovations like these, we’re helping our customers upgrade to the technology of tomorrow. Essentially, it allows IT teams to go beyond routine IT management and instead empower them to unlock more business value via high- end work. Our customers can now singularly focus on delivering faster, better innovations to their end consumers.
In India, a number of organisations of all sizes (some existing, some net new customers) have upgraded to the Oracle Autonomous Database. Let me give you one example of an early adopter. Federal Bank, a leading mid-size bank with origins in South India, performed ATM analytics using Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse and Oracle Analytics Cloud. In less than four weeks, they were able to realise an intuitive, user-friendly solution that empowered their senior leaders with actionable insights for faster, better decision making. This has resulted in direct business productivity improvements for the bank.
BFSI and Retail are two industry verticals where we’re seeing more traction, but we expect other verticals to follow suit in the coming months. In fact, it’s heartening to know that the Oracle Autonomous Database is resonating with non-IT senior executives as well – such as CFOs and CMOs, as they look to extract actionable insights faster from their datasets.