For a company that supposedly doesn’t “get” the cloud,
Those are some impressive numbers—and they’re among the primary reasons why I recently wrote a column called Larry Ellison Doesn't Get the Cloud: The Dumbest Idea of 2013.
But back to the customers:
Those 10,000 organizations are turning to the cloud not to be technologically hip but rather to help themselves begin to strategically transform the ways in which they do business. And cloud computing, after years of being overhyped and underperforming, has become here in 2013 an ideal platform for driving those transformations in ways that are effective, affordable, and sustainable:
- Get better products to market faster
- Deliver better and more-engaging service to customers
- Optimize mobile-powered sales teams with right-time information and insights
- Align talent all across the company with business priorities
- Reduce risk for compliance and reporting
All of those imperatives are being driven by a set of global forces that are stressing and reshaping every kind of industry and every type of business. Taken together, these forces make cloud computing a powerful alternative for businesses scrambling to keep up with an information explosion, a stunningly fast move to mobile commerce and lifestyle, and the parallel rise of social as one of the most powerful shapers of corporate image and success today.
Consider these facts about those big drivers of change:
- Globalization: in 2012—just last year—9 billion devices were connected to the Internet. In 2020, that number will soar to 50 billion. (For more on that, please check out this related article: Want To Kill Your Career? Just Ignore The Big Data Boom.)
- The Data Explosion: 90% of the world’s data was created in just the past 2years; and by 2020, the volume of data we have will increase by 50X—not 50%, but 50X.
- Mobility: 87% of the world’s population use mobile devices—that’s about 6 billion people. And the volume of mobile data they’re creating is growing at a compound annual rate of 78%.
- The Rise of Social Business: consumers today are clearly expecting and demanding better and more-fulfilling customer experiences as they’re more willing to share negative experiences on social nets, more willing to let a bad experience end a commercial relationship, and even more willing to pay significantly more for great experiences. (For more on that, please see Mark Hurd on the Customer Revolution: Oracle’s Top 10 Insights.)
- Modernize to Survive: Companies today are still running lots and lots of 20-year-old legacy apps, but those apps don’t stand a chance against the relentless rigors of today’s high-volume, high-velocity, and high-variety business transactions. And on top of that they’re also supposed to be able to handle analytics? As a wise man once said, “Fuhgeddaboudit.”
In the face of all of those daunting challenges, more and more businesses and other types of large organizations are turning to cloud computing to let them handle the surging volumes of data and demanding workloads in a manner that also lets those customers begin spending less on low-value overhead and infrastructure and more on customer-facing growth initiatives.
As I wrote earlier this week in a column called Cloud Industry Rockets Toward $100 Billion:
In fact, the call for CIOs to lead that type of budget overhaul ranked #1 on my list of The Top 10 Strategic CIO Issues for 2013. And on that same list, issue #6 is “Upgrade ‘Cloud Strategy’ to “Business Transformation Enabled by the Cloud,’ ” in which I wrote the following:
Without question, CIOs must have detailed strategies and plans for cloud computing and many already have those in place (to those of you who don’t, well, did you ever get that high-school teaching certificate?). But the strategic CIO will use the next several months to collaborate with the CEO in upgrading that tech-centric plan into a broader vision for a sweeping business transformation of the entire enterprise. If you’re still viewing your cloud strategy based on a tech-driven plan written a year or two ago—before the ascendancy of social, customer engagement, Big Data, and business analytics—you’re going to miss the boat. My POV: Cloud projects will not be judged on their technical merits or on hitting their go-live dates, but rather by how deeply they impact essential business-transformation initiatives, and by how much business value and opportunity they unlocked. In the process, CIOs will segment themselves into two groups: IT leaders who focus solely on the tech aspects of cloud deployments, and business leaders who ensure that cloud projects are conceived and executed in the service of customers, business execution, and engagement.
To help achieve those goals, customers can choose from among thousands of providers of cloud products, technologies, and services. And as I mentioned at the top of this piece, many have selected Oracle because it offers customers a wider range of cloud solutions and a wider range of consumption choices than any other cloud vendor—and, those solutions are all fully open, modular, and integrated.
And to help businesses around the globe get a sense of how the cloud can help them get out in front of the business challenges they face today, Oracle’s launched a rolling-thunder roadshow called Oracle CloudWorld, which we kicked off last week in front of more than 2,000 attendees in Dubai.
Our next stop on the Oracle CloudWorld tour will be Jan 29 in Los Angeles, where the keynote will be shared by Oracle executive vice-president and product-development head Thomas Kurian and social and business-strategy guru Charlene Li of Altimeter Group.
Every Oracle CloudWorld event features tracks for the cloud can be used in Sales, Customer Service and Support, Finance and Operations, HR, and Applications Development. You can find the full schedule here, with stops in Los Angeles, Sydney, Mumbai, New York City, Singapore, Tokyo, Mexico City, Frankfurt, and London.
We hope you’ll be able to attend one of our Oracle CloudWorld events—after all, 10,000 cloud customers and 25 million cloud users can’t be all wrong.
RECOMMENDED READING FROM ORACLEVOICE:
Why Oracle CEO Larry Ellison Is So Bullish on Sun Hardware
Larry Ellison Doesn't Get the Cloud: The Dumbest Idea of 2013
Oracle's Secret Sauce: Why Exadata Is Rocking the Tech Industry
Cloud Industry Rockets Toward $100 Billion
The Strategic CIO Agenda 2013: Strategies, Priorities, and Career-Killers
Steve Ballmer Joins Larry Ellison as Software-Hardware Evangelist
The Biggest Big-Data Opportunities: How to Choose the Right One
The Top 10 Strategic CIO Issues For 2013
The CIO As Revenue Rainmaker: 7 Excellent Examples
The Deadly Cost Of Ignoring Big Data: $71.2 Million Per Year
Big Data Set to Explode as 40 Billion New Devices Connect to Internet
Steve Jobs, The $60 Light Bulb, And The Future Of Technology
Java Helps Twitter Outmuscle Massive Traffic Surge
