I attended and spoke at four Oracle Cloud Day events. Here are my top five takeaways.

This year’s Oracle Cloud Day event series was special for me. First, I got the chance to present as an opening keynote speaker. (That’s me under the Iron Man helmet.) Second, I got the chance to attend events in several cities in North America. And you know what? Every event was amazing and had something important to share.

Between hearing several amazing Oracle customers share their stories, my discussions with Oracle’s Chief Corporate Architect, Edward Screven, and some fun interactions with the ever-informative James Staten (VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester), there was a lot to take away from this year’s events. I want to reinforce five key points that I heard over and over from most of the attendees and presenters.

Customer Obsession Is Shifting To Adaptive Intelligence

I first heard the term adaptive intelligence when James Staten took the stage to describe it. I immediately loved the concept and became super excited to share it. Think of adaptive intelligence as an entirely new way to approach organizational and customer insights. With it, you use technology, data, AI systems, and more to effectively adapt to the changes in data, customer environments, fluctuations in the market, and much more. You can contrast it to these other forms of intelligence:

• Static intelligence, which uses predefined data sources that are infrequently updated, which means that insights reflect often stale and incomplete data
• Reactive intelligence, a reactive and often manual response to information
• Interactive intelligence, which is closer to real-time data interaction but still not fully adaptive

One of the key points of adaptive intelligence is to better demonstrate customer “obsession” by basing your actions, roadmaps, and innovation efforts on a broader view of your customers’ needs, wants, and challenges than the data most companies act on (the insights that they receive directly from customers). These outside-in views of your customers’ needs, forthcoming market changes, and future requirements help to ensure that your company has a broader view of your customers’ needs and acts on that view.

With adaptive intelligence, you use multiple, collaboratively sourced, and constantly updated data. This data is dynamically pulled from various streams, including social media, databases, and data lakes. As a result, insights reflect a complete picture that’s painted by just-in-time interrogation of data shared among multiple strategic partners. For example, you can intelligently use multicloud partners for adaptive intelligence, but all the data ingestion and processing is automated.

Finally, these insights constantly adapt as collaborators (both people and data sources) inform the process directly and autonomously update the data. To get to a state of adaptive intelligence, you need to learn how to treat data differently than you’d treat static information that’s sitting in a data repository or a database. This change in thinking includes how you interact with storage, access, security, analytics, and even data quality. The good news is that newer data management solutions are helping companies adopt adaptive intelligence and respond to markets more effectively.

Digital Cloud Ecosystems Will Connect Everyone to Apps, Data, Emerging Technologies, and Devices

Building off the previous point, a digital cloud ecosystem consists of several critical parts. Cloud isn’t just a unilateral platform for apps and data. Rather, cloud is a powerful aggregation of services designed to connect people, apps, and data. This aggregate includes blockchain, IoT, AI, and automation, which in turn connects customers to cloud ERP systems, cloud analytics, cloud-based ecommerce, connected devices, M2M, and so much more. This new level of connectivity empowers end users in new ways.

Through cloud ecosystems, you can employ modern analytics and even APIs for self-service integration. So, business unit leaders can become more responsive to customers when they have self-service analytics tools that connect them to a data platform that’s easier to understand and that’s truly integrated. 

From there, APIs for AI and machine learning (ML) algorithms, and for programmatic access of data, make it easier to build personalized and intelligent applications. These applications are the key differentiator for advanced technologies. Digital cloud ecosystems not only help connect everyone; they also make it much easier to deliver personalized services that can dramatically impact the competitive stance of a company in a digital economy.

Prepare for Even More Multicloud and Hybrid Cloud

As the maturity of cloud increases, we get a better understanding of where it fits and how to best use it. According to James Staten and Forrester, 63% of public cloud adopters are using two or more implementations or environments from unique vendors. From there, Forrester shows that 74% of enterprises describe their strategy as hybrid—they use cloud in parallel with other technologies, whether cloud or non-cloud. Finally, 32% of enterprises are building new applications for the cloud.

Cloud computing is a powerful tool if you know how to use it and you don’t let all the features and functions overwhelm you. If you’re looking into this idea but are concerned about complexity or fragmentation, have a good partner to take you on the hybrid or multicloud journey. Ignoring modern cloud concepts can set you back.

Data-Driven, AI-Powered Analytics Will Be Infused into Almost Every Aspect of Product Development and Customer Interaction

We’re all going to have to get used to this big concept. Intelligent technologies are here to make life easier, and they’re not going to disappear. During Oracle Cloud Day, I learned about AI-powered analytics where ML and even natural language processing (NLP) are integrated into everything. Imagine being able to ask anything of your data and interact with it using NLP in a browser, a mobile device, a messaging app, or even a digital assistant. From there, you can use ML algorithms to analyze your data and use suggested rules and transformations to improve data quality and reduce data risks. Then, you can uncover hidden insights through data analysis and make predictions based on this analysis. Finally, these data-driven solutions become adaptive and personalized, allowing you to understand products, users, and even group behavior learned over time. If you’re not using smarter solutions yet, look into these technologies and how they can make a difference.

Effective Cloud Security Is Built In

When cloud providers leave security best practices to users, security issues increase. Security must be integrated with the cloud deployment, not a fragmented add-on of traditional on-premises security methods. If you’re deploying cloud, take the time to understand security parameters and how they impact your applications, services, and data. Look for solutions that natively integrate security and introduce autonomous security architectures that are constantly working to secure your environment. There’s no single, magical solution for security. However, you can minimize risk by having systems that automatically patch and even automatically secure data repositories.

I wish that I could make this list longer. The Oracle Cloud Day events had so many wonderful takeaways, including a cool augmented reality experience that was powered by the Oracle Autonomous Database.

One Last Thing…

The last point I want to make comes from the Developer’s Playground at Oracle Cloud Day sessions. Each city had its own Developer’s Playground, and each one was packed. What were the developers doing? Really cool hands-on labs that let them work on autonomous data management systems alongside direct development process integration.That is, autonomous data warehousing directly integrated into application, service, API, and solution development.

For the first time, these developers were introduced to a different way of managing data and how it flowed into the applications they were developing. Furthermore, they learned about Oracle APEX, a low-code development platform for building scalable and secure enterprise apps, with world-class features that you can deploy anywhere. And it’s a fully supported, no-cost feature of Oracle Autonomous Database. The amazing part was that developers could use a powerful backend data platform while still developing powerful APIs and application solutions.  

Outside of developers, amazing speakers, and fun augmented reality glasses, Oracle Cloud Day was about what we can do with advanced autonomous solutions and data. Most of all, it highlighted what we can do together as a technology community. 

Learning with other technologists was a blast and showcased how far we’re progressing in this world. You might be reading this post from home, like many of us who are working through a pandemic. Know that technology is here to give you the tools you need to stay safe and productive. You can rely on these types of tools to be efficient, resilient, and hopefully healthier. Looking ahead, be sure to read more about advanced autonomous solutions, how data impacts your life, and how new devices can make everyday tasks much easier. Beyond anything else, stay safe and never stop innovating!

Oracle is bringing the same Oracle Cloud Day experience directly to you! Get up-to-date, on-key trends and solutions, hear from customers, and plan the future of your business all from home. Register here and join us from home on May 5, 2020.