Emerging Tech: Data-Driven

AI, blockchain, and IoT are more powerful than the data that feeds them.

By Tom Haunert

May/June 2019

Businesses are turning to emerging technologies—including artificial intelligence/machine learning, blockchain, the Internet of Things, and digital assistants—to put their abundance of data to better use.

For example, they’re using machine learning, whose learning improves the more data you feed it, to get a more complete understanding of their customers, finance operations, and supply chain partnerships via cloud-based sales, marketing, ERP, and other applications that build in the technology. That learning turns into better, more efficient business processes.

For those who think their business isn’t really creating or consuming enough information to benefit from machine learning, their turn is coming soon. Even the smallest businesses are starting to derive value from data they acquire from outside their organizations and traditional enterprise boundaries.

Emerging Articles

This issue’s three cover stories focus on the power of data-driving emerging technologies to reshape a range of businesses. “Only the Best Business Data” describes how organizations are using Oracle’s DataFox AI technology to get up-to-date information and insights into as many as 3.7 million companies— representing many thousands of potential sales leads for customer-facing applications. In “Tracking Conflict Minerals,” we show how supply chain company Circulor is building applications on top of Oracle Blockchain Platform that track the origins of gold, cobalt, and tantalum from the mine to the end user, ensuring the ethical origins of those materials. And in “The IoT Is in the Applications,” Oracle Group Vice President Bhagat Nainani makes the case for taking a business-outcome-based approach—rather than a device-first approach—with your organization’s IoT projects.

In his ongoing Oracle Magazine digital assistant column, this one titled “Escape Room,” Oracle Master Principal Product Manager Frank Nimphius provides help for bot users who can’t find the answers they’re looking for.

For more stories on AI, blockchain, IoT, and digital assistants, check out our emerging technologies archive—and come back often for updates.

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Photography by Bob Adler/Getty Images