ALL companies, big or small are affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, and the reality is no one really knows how the world will look like in the future, but several key themes in the technology space are emerging.
According to Oracle's regional managing director, Asean and South Asian Growing Economies (SAGE), Cherian Varghese, sometimes such pandemic triggers customers to act in a particular way and most of them have made sure their business moves towards digital transformation.
"I can say that there were some SME customers who were reluctant to go on a public cloud but have decided to adopt it during the pandemic," he said at an Oracle virtual media briefing recently.
He said one of the best ways for companies to brave through the uncertainty is to migrate to the cloud.
"Migration to the cloud will be key as businesses look to build resiliency and adaptability for the new normal," he said.
As economies reopen, businesses need to balance urgent and critical short-term needs with long-term strategic priorities.
For businesses, this would mean investing in efforts to ensure their survival during a period of uncertainty.
The past few months have shown how organisations with low to zero digital business models are taking the hit, especially for companies in the consumer-facing sectors.
"Many businesses have had to evaluate their operations and make tough decisions. Across the board, organisations that have been quick to innovate and pivot based on market demands and landscape at present time are finding themselves in a better place," he said.
ACHIEVING BUSINESS RESILIENCY
Varghese said in today's "new normal", organisations must reconcile with workforce changes and find new ways to engage with customers. Governments and businesses alike are finding ways to address the economic impact and mitigate supply chain volatility and risks.
"As a result of the current situation, customers we're speaking to come to us with two things on their mind – how to plan for a contingency and how to bulletproof or future-proof their current IT operations. The cloud presents itself as an attractive and flexible option for organisations to accelerate the standardisation and automation required to enable business continuity, while planning ahead," he said.
For business users, Oracle offers a complete suite of Software as a Service (SaaS) or cloud-based application services. These services are ready-to-use technologies that enable users to automate sales and marketing activities, human resources operations, enterprise planning, financial management, supply chain management, and so on.
THE CLOUD JOURNEY
While the market is seeing an accelerated interest in cloud adoption, some businesses are still hindered from taking the leap by security concerns and data residency regulations.
In making it easier for businesses to adopt cloud technology, Oracle has been providing options to help them navigate the current situation and setting themselves up for a faster rebound.
"We acknowledge the challenges in the landscape and complexities that businesses face when migrating to the cloud. It's important for businesses to have flexibility and multiple options on their journey to the cloud," said Varghese.
For example, the company recently announced Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer, which is the industry's first fully-managed cloud region that brings all of Oracle's second-generation cloud services, including Autonomous Database and Oracle Cloud applications, to customer data centres.
The company claimed that no solution was able to bridge the gap where on-premises offerings from other cloud providers offer a very small subset of the services available in their public cloud regions.
With this offering, Oracle is making all of its cloud services (more than 50 services) available on-premises so enterprises can use its cloud services wherever they need them – in the cloud or on-premises via Cloud@Customer.
"This is ideal for highly regulated or security-focused businesses needing to meet demanding latency and data residency requirements, reduce operational costs, and modernise legacy applications," said Varghese.
ORACLE CLOUD DEPLOYMENT
Over the last three years, Exadata Cloud@Customer has been deployed at hundreds of customers, including large financial services companies, telecoms, healthcare providers, insurers, and pharmaceutical companies worldwide to modernise their infrastructure.
Building on the success of Oracle's Exadata Cloud@Customer service, Oracle announced the availability of Oracle Autonomous Database on Exadata Cloud@Customer recently.
This solution helps meet customer's requirements for strict data sovereignty and security by delivering high-performance Exadata Cloud Service capabilities behind customer's data centre firewall.
Varghese said, for organisations that are ready for public cloud, Oracle encourages customers to build their applications on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). OCI delivers modern cloud development tools for businesses looking to "move and improve" its traditional workloads.
"The goal for OCI is to have better performance than the rest of the Cloud market and also deliver the best pricing for that performance," he said.
"We are currently on track to launch our OCI region in Singapore within our current financial year to better meet the demands of our customers in the region," he added.
Companies like Seven Philippine Corporation (7-11 Philippines), Vitarich, Partex, Citi Bank Bangladesh, Pak-Qatar Takaful(Pakistan), Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Center (Pakistan), Maldives Police, Cargills (Sri Lanka) and Sunshine Holding (Sri Lanka) are examples of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure customers.
Locally, Oracle cloud solutions are being used by UEM Group Berhad (UEM Group), where several of its subsidiaries namely, PLUS Malaysia Berhad (PLUS) and UEM Edgenta Berhad (UEM Edgenta) are now live on Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).