This is a post by Bill Kleyman, industry analyst and executive.

I recently had the pleasure of attending Oracle Cloud Day in Chicago.

And you better believe it was a lot of fun! I was really pleasantly surprised that the conversation revolved around our data-driven society and where new, smart, technologies will help organizations around the world become digital natives. It wasn’t just about databases. It was around autonomous solutions. It wasn’t just, “Data is important.” It was about how to actually use information to do great things.

Most of all, we had a chance to discuss how to help companies really get rid of legacy technology and become digital natives. On that note, Gartner recently predicted that every dollar invested in digital business innovation through the end of 2020 will require enterprises to spend at least three times that to continuously modernize the legacy application portfolio. This means that organizations must embrace their digital futures and become an active part of a persistently connected world.

To that extent, it’s my pleasure to share my top five Oracle Cloud Day insights:

It’s absolutely critical to design around user experience and latency. Remember, just because a service or app is up, that doesn’t mean it’s actually bringing you value. In a data-driven world where slow is the new down, organizations looking to move to cloud must absolutely take location, cloud design, and optimization into consideration. This can mean working with different regions, optimizing connectivity through great partners, and deploying intelligent optimization whenever possible.

Our threat landscape continues to grow and evolve. This is the result of a digital world where device proliferation and constant connectivity are the new normal. It’s also a big reason why there will be more than 3.5 million open security jobs by 2021. The big point is to be as agile as possible when it comes to security. Don’t let legacy architecture drag you down. When environments become complex and fragmented, they’re not only harder to manage, but they pose even more security risk. In fact, 85% of the time that a breach occurs, there’s a patch available that could have prevented it. Things like cloud and automation can really help alleviate these pains.

The future is autonomous. In fact, you’re already experiencing this if you’ve interacted with chatbots or used an intelligent internal search function. Looking ahead, 100 percent of cloud applications will feature some type of cognitive technology such as artificial intelligence, more than 50 percent of enterprise data will be managed autonomously, and 85 percent of all interactions will become automated. Don’t let the world of autonomous optimization pass you by. Be sure to plan and be ready for it!

Evolve from maintenance to innovation. Basically, new intelligent designs allow you to move from putting out fires to planting seeds for the business. Leaders in our industry will quickly see that automation, cloud, smarter data control mechanisms, and powerful user experiences are all a part of the engine driving innovation for the business. This means they’ll be able to focus on core strategies rather than just constantly putting out fires.

The future cloud ecosystem is much smarter than you think. It’s not just a virtual machine or two. It’s not just a database. Cloud has effectively become a major part of the business innovation engine. This means leveraging powerful cloud tools like auto-migration for various workloads, migrating DevOps and even containers into the cloud, running high-performance, cloud native, and even machine learning apps in a cloud ecosystem. Most of all, advanced cloud solutions now offer multiple layers of protection and even attack detection. The cloud is a lot safer than you might think.

Get Started as a Digital Native

While at Oracle Cloud Day, I had the chance to spend a few minutes talking to Mark Sunday, Oracle’s CIO and Senior Vice President. We discussed cloud, automation, autonomous vehicles and services, and how all of this will become our new normal. A key point in our discussion was the fact that organizations that embrace this new normal will become key players in an already digital market.

Those that haven’t jumped on board yet absolutely need to get started. To become a disruptor in our digitally native world, you, your organization, and your processes may need to get disrupted to begin with. Look at new technologies to make you cloud-ready, new designs to take automation to a new level, and new business concepts to enable you to embrace an always-connected market. Don’t let legacy weigh you down. Embrace digital and become a part of the new normal.

Missed Oracle Cloud Day but interested in learning about more game-changing tech? Meet us at an Oracle Cloud Day Leadership Summit in a city near you.

Bill Kleyman has more than 15 years of technology industry experience as an executive, analyst, advisory board member, writer, and speaker. He uses the latest innovations, such as AI, machine learning, blockchain, DevOps, and cloud, to help customers achieve business goals. This post was originally published on his LinkedIn profile.