On Monday, Steve Miranda was settling in to his seat for his 15-hour flight
to Sydney, Australia, for Oracle CloudWorld. And then he tweeted, “Right behind
me on flight to Sydney CloudWorld — BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN!!! Rarely star struck. Am
now. Need to get a photo w/o being rude.”
Camera phone: replaceable. Picture: priceless.
And priceless could also describe the experience for the customers at Oracle CloudWorld in Sydney (and other cities around the world). These worldwide events are attracting a less technical group than Oracle has hosted in the past. That’s because the cloud model has shifted much of the decision making and responsibility to the business users. This has changed the role of IT and empowered people with less technical depth or skill.
That scenario led to governance challenges at the New Zealand Post when it implemented Oracle RightNow in 2009, according to head of customer channels Russell Stephens, who spoke at the conference. Managing director Robert McGregor said the same thing happened at CRMNow, “Now we have a governance process that looks across what functionality we have in the cloud. It’s run at a management team level; there’s no independent CIO role.”
No matter where the customer attendees were in their cloud adoption, Steve Miranda helped them put their journeys in perspective. Since cloud doesn’t require a ‘big bang’ rollout, he said that people can migrate gradually as they see opportunities for innovation and savings. Others, who want to do something with social, mobile or big data, can move to the cloud immediately, “while still hooking in to all the other goodness they buy from Oracle.” Whether it’s a hybrid approach or an immediate jump, Miranda predicts that in two to five years, “it will not be unusual for all of an organization’s major systems to be in the cloud.”
This short summary just scratches the surface of the Oracle CloudWorld event in Sydney. Four different publications covered the event, all reporting positively on the event and our solutions: ZDNet, ITWire, ITNews, The Register.
And just for clarification, Bruce Springsteen did not attend Oracle CloudWorld.