But the Oracle of this decade (and recent history) is more specifically all about data and information observability, autonomous control, analytics, diagnostics and we might just pepper in a double observability for good measure i.e. this is a company on a mission to cut through the risk of fragmented observance across what are increasingly complex multi-cloud environments.

Larry ‘did I tell you about my sailing career’ Ellison’s words are still ringing in our ears from the last time we attended Oracle Open World (Ed – ah yes, 2019)… during which the Oracle CTO and co-founder described how his firm had engineered a substantial proportion of autonomous intelligence into its core database offering (to perform everything from system patches to upgrades & maintenance and onwards to data preparation) and platform.

So what of Oracle 2020 in a year when (of course) the organisation’s main customer/user event has had to switch to virtual?

The company’s news this month sees it talk about the Oracle Cloud Observability and Management Platform.

Quite a mouthful, but one designed to explain the ‘bringing together’ of a set of management, diagnostic and analytics services to help eliminate the complexity, risk, and cost associated with today’s fragmented approach for managing multi-cloud work zones, spanning public, hybrid and on-premises environments as they do.

A unified view, just for you

Part of the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) suite of services, OCI itself claims to provide a unified view across an entire software stack. 

“It enables easy diagnostics of cloud-native and traditional technologies deployed in the cloud or on-premises. With built-in machine learning, it automatically detects anomalies and enables quick remediation in near-real time. The platform has adopted an open, standards-based approach that is vendor-agnostic, supporting ecosystem interoperability out-of-the-box with Slack, Grafana, Twilio, PagerDuty and others,” notes Oracle, in a press statement.

Ellison and co contend that cloud environment complexity has grown, but monitoring and management tooling has generally not kept pace with that same complexity curve.

Wait for the payoff – yep – Oracle OCI with the new function actually DOES keep up, right?

Yes, that’s pretty much what the firm is saying, especially in light of the rise of a growing number of emerging technologies such as Kubernetes, containers, converged databases and microservices. 

Instead of a collection of siloed and fragmented tools, the Oracle Cloud Observability and Management Platform promises to provide a connected solution comprised of related services. 

What’s in the box?

This includes the newly announced Logging, Logging Analytics, Database Management, Application Performance Monitoring, Operations Insights and Service Connector Hub services, as well as existing services such as Monitoring, Notifications, Events, Functions, Streaming and OS Management. 

“Oracle has deep domain expertise in operating the largest portfolio of SaaS and enterprise application environments. We also manage the largest and most critical datasets for our customers, and we develop and operate on-premises infrastructure, unlike other cloud providers,” said Clay Magouyrk, executive vice president, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Magouyrk insists that Oracle is eliminating the complexity and reducing the risks and costs associated with today’s multi-tool approach to make the overall management process more intuitive and cost-effective.

The integrated platform aggregates all observability data for holistic analysis and applies operations-optimised ML algorithms that can identify anomalous system behaviour, rapidly isolate and remediate performance problems and prevent outages by providing accurate forecasting of impending issues. 

This information is delivered in out-of-the-box and customer-designed dashboards with cross-tier views that provide complete visibility across applications, databases, infrastructure and cloud environments. 

One-click instrumentation & observability is now a thing, get used to the term.

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Oracle’s Data Science is helping retailers find their top future customers using data science.

A new offering from Oracle Retail, Consumer Insights aids retailers in understanding the characteristics of their best customers then extends those traits to find similar potential customers among the petabytes of third-party consumer data in Oracle Data Cloud. This enables retailers to optimize customer acquisition campaigns with more relevant, targeted products and offers.

Oracle Data Cloud combines the leading technologies and talent from Oracle’s acquisitions of AddThis, BlueKai, Crosswise, Datalogix, Grapeshot, and Moat.

Gaining new customers is a top priority for retail marketers, with the cost growing every year. In the recent holiday season, a new survey showed that 77 percent of retailers planned to increase their spend in this area. But are they reaching the right prospective buyers?

With Oracle Retail Consumer Insights, retailers can achieve a deep understanding of their existing customers through enriched attributes and advanced data science. For example, do the most profitable athletic gear customers also purchase particular brands of soft drinks or deodorant or snack foods? Is there a common denominator in the type of vehicle they drive or restaurants they frequent or vacations they take?

By enriching first-party data retailers have on their existing customers with purchase data and other characteristics that happen outside the retailer’s vantage point, Consumer Insights can cluster together attributes and actions and identify new segments that would be otherwise unknown. Retailers can then use this information to find similar buyers to target with offers that are highly relevant to their lifestyle and tastes.

The data in Oracle Data Cloud represents profile-linked transaction-level sales data and a rich set of other demographic, geographic, and interest attributes from Oracle Data Cloud. Through this new solution, that third-party data can now be coupled with first-party data retailers have on customers, omnichannel touch-points, inventory movements, promotional response, and much more.

“The value of data can’t be found in zeros and ones, but in human connections to the interests, experiences, and behavior of current and potential customers,” said Cecilia Mao, vice president of product, Oracle Data Cloud. “When you know that your customers are also more likely to buy at the grocery store, brand affinity and hobbies, you can build more accurate models to find your best potential customers, then use multiple channels to reach them at scale.”

Applying predictive and prescriptive analytics to this data, retailers can connect, analyze, experiment, and explore new customer segments, knowing that advanced decision science is under the hood. Consumer Insights evaluates “what if” analysis and explores and finds prospects in a continuously iterative process to get the criteria right and identify the most appropriate customer segment. Once correctly identified, retailers can take action by launching campaigns, promotions, or advertising, with the option to activate using Oracle Data Cloud’s industry-wide connections.

“When it comes to grabbing the attention of potential customers, every second and moment matters,” said Jeff Warren, Vice President, Oracle Retail.

Jeff added, “Armed with intelligent data based on real customer attributes and behaviors, retailers will truly be able to put the needs and likes of shoppers at the center of their new customer acquisition strategy.”

Visit Oracle (booth #4837) at NRF 2020 Vision Retail’s Big Show (January 12-14) at Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, New York City, to see Oracle Retail Consumer Insights live.

While in the booth, see the full Oracle Retail Insights Suite and demo the new Retail Home dashboards to see why Oracle is the modern platform for retail.

Oracle is the modern platform for retail.

Oracle provides retailers with a complete, open, and integrated platform for best-of-breed business applications, cloud services, and hardware that are engineered to work together. Leading fashion, grocery, and specialty retailers use Oracle solutions to accelerate from best practice to next practice, drive operational agility, and refine the customer experience.

Currently, Oracle Data Cloud helps marketers use data to capture consumer attention and drive results. Used by 199 of AdAge’s 200 largest advertisers, our Audience, Context and Measurement solutions extend across the top media platforms and a global footprint of more than 100 countries. We give marketers the data and tools needed for every stage of the marketing journey, from audience planning to pre-bid brand safety, contextual relevance, viewability confirmation, fraud protection, and ROI measurement.

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American tech giant Oracle on Thursday announced the first batch of startups for its Startup Cloud Accelerator programme in New Delhi and Mumbai. The selected young ventures are using technologies such as artificial intelligence and Internet of Things to solve problems such as diagnosing diseases among newborn babies to providing anti-counterfeiting solutions to enterprises.

“What is interesting is that majority of the companies that applied are using artificial intelligence and machine learning and these are areas that we have (already) embraced tremendously,” said Sanket Atal, group vice president of Development, Oracle, in a telephone interview. “This underscores how the synergy is happening between Oracle cloud offering and startups,” said Mr. Atal.

For example, one of the new portfolio firms iNICU enables early diagnosis of critical diseases in neonates by leveraging the Internet of Things and AI and improve the overall quality of healthcare. Another young firm Original4sure provides anti-counterfeiting and advanced tracking supply chain solutions to enterprises in the manufacturing sector.

The Redwood Shores, California-based firm said these companies will be entitled to technical and business mentoring by Oracle and industry experts. Besides Oracle cloud credits and co-working space, these ventures would also be given access to Oracle’s ecosystem of customers, investors and partners.

With $37 billion in annual revenue, Oracle had introduced the cloud accelerator initiative as a pilot programme last April in Bengaluru and it has been a success for the organisation. It now has eight such accelerators across the globe out of which three are based in India which includes Bengaluru, New Delhi and Mumbai.

“We have taken feedback from the startups so that we can improve our products as well. The inputs have been incredibly valuable,” said Mr. Atal.

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