Today and tomorrow, I am at the Oracle Openworld 2020 in London. It is a conference series that stops at various cities around the globe. Here, I want to share my main insights in posts over the next few days.

This first post relates to moving to the cloud.  Think about two Oracle solutions: Oracle Human Capital Management and the Oracle Cloud Database Service. Both run in the cloud. However, their value propositions and the implications for companies moving to the cloud differ completely.

If you move your IT and your application landscape – including for example Oracle database – to the cloud, you get effortless reliability, scalability, security etc. Cloud vendors such as Oracle, Microsoft or Google ensure that their services are up and running and security threats are patched automatically. You do not have to patch databases or deploy updates or reinstall them on new hardware. All lower level admin disappeared. Your staff can focus on consulting their colleagues in how to benefit more from the technology or to work on other projects.

The value proposition is different if you move from an on-prem software application to a cloud version such as Oracle Human Capital Management. You subscribe to a software solution. Certainly, many pure IT tasks such as admin work is gone afterwards. However, many panelists and speakers such as XXX emphasized that it is important to keep the implementation / configuration / business transformation team within your organization even after the “go live”. At this point in time, technology issues are solved, and the organization is ready to perform their processes on the newt platform.

In a second phase, you have the chance to take real advantage of the new model: cloud software offers many features. There are more and more new features coming frequently (in case of Oracle, every 90 days). Making use of them requires transforming and adapting your business process. This is an ongoing task. Thus, when moving to a cloud application, you still need knowledge of the interface between technology and business.

To conclude: Thus, be sure that you know what kind of cloud project you are in – moving to cloud infrastructure or to a cloud application – and to be sure to have the right team in place even after the go live!

By the way, tomorrow, I will share my thoughts on (over-)customization and new business models as a result of software as a service.

Published 12.2.2020