Big Shift: NetSuite Moving to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

In recent years, Oracle has been intensely focused on its cloud strategy as the key to its growth. At Oracle Open World 2016, with the announcement of Oracle’s second-generation cloud infrastructure, Larry Ellison said, “Amazon’s lead is over.” It was an ambitious goal: At the time, Oracle’s cloud infrastructure (OCI) business was bringing in less than $200M per quarter.

Uptake of Oracle’s cloud applications is great, but when it comes to Oracle really competing with Amazon or Microsoft as a platform for independent software vendors (ISVs), the story is different.

The absence of multitenant ISVs on OCI is not because of a lack of capabilities. Oracle’s flagship database, since v12c was released in 2013, has built-in multitenancy in the form of database containers, which allow multiple tenants to share a single Oracle database, with individual containers assigned to each tenant. This approach puts the multitenancy into the infrastructure layer, allowing developers to focus their efforts on application development, not on the mechanics of multitenancy.

Oracle’s lack of commercial SaaS providers building on OCI is about to change.

Read the rest of this post on the Strativa blog:
NetSuite on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure: What It Means for Customers

Enterprise Software Vendors Putting AI within Reach

To gain the attention of customers, prospects, and analysts, enterprise software vendors are always on the hunt for the next big thing. During the past decade, social networking, mobile apps, the Internet of Things, and data analytics have all filled this need. But during the past year or so, their attention has shifted to artificial intelligence.
 
When we hear the term artificial intelligence (AI), most of us immediately think of the AI we encounter in our personal lives: web ads based on our search history, facial recognition on Facebook, or the interactive voice response systems of our banks or insurance companies. Or, maybe we think of personal digital assistants, such as Siri (Apple), Alexa (Amazon), or Cortana (Microsoft). In other words, we all use AI on a personal level, whether we call it AI or just expect it to be part of our everyday experience as consumers.

Just as social networking and smartphones took hold first in the consumer world and then moved into business, we can also expect artificial intelligence to begin to move into business applications in a natural way.

Today, nearly every large enterprise software vendor, and many of the smaller ones, are working to embed AI capabilities into the core of their business software. Here are examples from just three of them.

Read the rest of this post by Dee Long on the Strativa blog: AI Coming Soon to a Business System Near You

Change Management Doesn’t Have to Be a Game of Chance

Too often, in carrying out new initiatives, business leaders can be very focused on getting the technical details right, while neglecting the people-side of the change.

For example, with ERP implementations we see companies investing the time and energy to select the right system but spend no time at all to ensure that the people who have to use the system buy in to the decision.

Then they wonder why, when it is time to start the implementation, employees resist moving to the new system.

Why do business leaders too often neglect the people-side of change? It is usually because they think of change management as something intangible, something that they cannot control, measure, or track. They know how to develop a project plan for technical implementation of a new initiative (for example, an ERP system), but they don’t know how to develop a plan with tangible and practical steps to help people embrace the new system. They know how to manage projects, but not how to manage change.

It is not for lack of talk about change management. The same business leaders have shelves full of books about change management, cultural change, and leadership. But too much of what has been written about change management is theoretical. After reading the book, the leader still doesn’t know what to do in terms of practical steps to take care of the people-side of change.

A real change management program is not something soft or nebulous. After years of research and real-world experiences, change management professionals have developed many methods and tools that can make change management as tangible and practical as project management.

Read the rest of this post on the Strativa blog:
Change Management Doesn’t Have to Be a Game of Chance