Greetings from Alliance 2014 in sunny Las Vegas, where today we made a number of announcements about increased investment by Oracle in the higher education market. During the opening reception last night and in more detail this morning, we outlined our plans to build (from the ground up) a new Student Information System (Oracle Cloud Student) that will be offered as SaaS and designed with the modern student in mind. Make no mistake, this product will have the student, and the student's success, at the foundation of the development effort upon which we are embarking.
There will be a strong focus on mobile, social, and the student experience, with a significant amount of attention given to the "modern" (now what some might even call "traditional") multi-channel student who takes courses across multiple institutions, some (to potentially all) on-line, and in some cases "on-demand" (i.e. term-less). It will embed predictive analytics, which will significantly enhance the modern academy's effort to improve student success.
Probably the biggest overlooked element in all of this is the enormous head start we have as a company given the massive investments in SaaS, Cloud infrastructure, CX, and analytics. No other company on the planet can draw on the rich portfolio of IP, development talent, deployment and implementation experience, and industry expertise than Oracle. While I've said in this blog in the past that it's a very exciting time to be a part of the higher education IT ecosystem at this point in the industry's evolution, our focus on developing a modern SIS for higher ed of 2015 and beyond makes this period even more compelling.
Our CEO was personally involved in approving these projects, and we aren't stopping with just a new Cloud SIS. We're building higher education-specific functionality into our existing robust SaaS HCM and ERP products, so that colleges and universities have the option of running their entire business systems footprint on Oracle's Education Cloud.
And given the breadth and depth (both from an IP as well as from a financial stability perspective) we are continuing to develop, enhance, and improve the already most mature, functional, and global suite of business systems for higher education: Peoplesoft Campus Solutions, HCM, and ERP. While many have assumed these were zombie products, the delivered features and enhancements in Campus alone over the past 8 quarters are greater than all of the R&D done on the product in the prior 5 years. To help the market understand this commitment to our existing portfolio, we will be launching Campus Solutions 9.2 concurrent with the Cloud announcements I mentioned above.
I can't end this post without a final comment on "cloud. The hype around cloud computing is palpable. Many of the new entrants into the market like to paint Oracle into a corner as "legacy" and "non-cloud." But with this announcement, as well as with the capabilities we have today with our complete end-to-end stack and investment in all Cloud "layers" (IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS), there is no software consumption modality that we cannot provide at extreme performance and extreme efficiency and cost-effectiveness (again, because of the end-to-end capabilities we have in designing how the software and hardware are integrated to work together). We've learned a lot from many other industries' foray into Cloud and believe now is the time for us to help higher education as it embarks on a similar journey.
There will be a strong focus on mobile, social, and the student experience, with a significant amount of attention given to the "modern" (now what some might even call "traditional") multi-channel student who takes courses across multiple institutions, some (to potentially all) on-line, and in some cases "on-demand" (i.e. term-less). It will embed predictive analytics, which will significantly enhance the modern academy's effort to improve student success.
Probably the biggest overlooked element in all of this is the enormous head start we have as a company given the massive investments in SaaS, Cloud infrastructure, CX, and analytics. No other company on the planet can draw on the rich portfolio of IP, development talent, deployment and implementation experience, and industry expertise than Oracle. While I've said in this blog in the past that it's a very exciting time to be a part of the higher education IT ecosystem at this point in the industry's evolution, our focus on developing a modern SIS for higher ed of 2015 and beyond makes this period even more compelling.
Our CEO was personally involved in approving these projects, and we aren't stopping with just a new Cloud SIS. We're building higher education-specific functionality into our existing robust SaaS HCM and ERP products, so that colleges and universities have the option of running their entire business systems footprint on Oracle's Education Cloud.
And given the breadth and depth (both from an IP as well as from a financial stability perspective) we are continuing to develop, enhance, and improve the already most mature, functional, and global suite of business systems for higher education: Peoplesoft Campus Solutions, HCM, and ERP. While many have assumed these were zombie products, the delivered features and enhancements in Campus alone over the past 8 quarters are greater than all of the R&D done on the product in the prior 5 years. To help the market understand this commitment to our existing portfolio, we will be launching Campus Solutions 9.2 concurrent with the Cloud announcements I mentioned above.
I can't end this post without a final comment on "cloud. The hype around cloud computing is palpable. Many of the new entrants into the market like to paint Oracle into a corner as "legacy" and "non-cloud." But with this announcement, as well as with the capabilities we have today with our complete end-to-end stack and investment in all Cloud "layers" (IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS), there is no software consumption modality that we cannot provide at extreme performance and extreme efficiency and cost-effectiveness (again, because of the end-to-end capabilities we have in designing how the software and hardware are integrated to work together). We've learned a lot from many other industries' foray into Cloud and believe now is the time for us to help higher education as it embarks on a similar journey.