When Oracle unveiled a range of self-directed applications for manufacturing that employ advanced technologies in mid-May, it marked the latest advance in the US vendor’s strategy to help automate business processes end-to-end through the software and systems on which they operate.
Instead of customers relying on in-house IT experts and outside consultants to tailor its off-the-shelf enterprise resource planning packages to the specific requirements of their operations, Oracle says its new suiteOpens a new window – Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Applications for Manufacturing – can monitor and maintain performance on its own using artificial intelligence and machine learning.
At least, that’s the goal. According to the Silicon Valley giant, whose core database management system is used by around 40% of international companies, the drive to automate its full applications suite that began with the February release of its Oracle 18c Database will take a decade to complete.
Subscription Revenue
The reasons for the chosen course are multiple, as are the means Oracle is using to achieve it.
Foremost is commercial, with the reduction in cost facilitated by automation viewed as an inducement to attract on-premises users of Oracle DMBS to the company’s hosted cloud – the platform on which the Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Applications for Manufacturing runs. Customers can gain access to the same functionality by onboarding Cloud at Customer, an environment that sits behind the user’s firewall and a similar source of subscription revenue for Oracle.
Efficiency also is a driver. By automatically provisioning, patching, tuning and backing up with the help of leading-edge tech, the applications perform better. Coming hot on the heels of the Autonomous Analytics, Autonomous Integration and Autonomous Builder coding functionalities announced earlier in the month, the suite can process data from different types of ERP source – including management systems for quality control, human resources and customer relationships – and marry them with the operational sensor and log data generated by connected machines to improve manufacturing execution.
Eliminating Human ErrorIncreased security enables DBMS users to cut costs, too. Removing human involvement in maintenance and monitoring eliminates errors and the man-hours needed to track and correct them. It also avoids the risk of breaches that can occur during the onboarding of vendor fixes and in the distributed development of applications and customizing of ERP software.
According to Black Duck by Synopsys, a management consultancy focusing on open-source software development, a dynamic increase in uptake of open-source code in commercial applications is reflected in increased risk of the kind that led to the breach at credit-rating service Equifax, which in September 2017 reported that 143 million credit records of US individuals had been compromised. The Boston-based company’s annual audit issued last week found open-source elements at work in 96% of the 1,100 commercial code bases it audited in 2017 – a 75% increase from the previous year.
Not to be outdone, rival vendors across the spectrum of both ERP and cloud offerings are working to close the development loop by incorporating automation into their own software, systems, services and platforms.
Playing Catch-Up
Unveiled in January, the IBM Automation Platform for Digital Business targets data entry, data capture, content sharing, workflow and decision-making, while CRM specialist Salesforce is applying automation via the Integrated Cloud it debuted in March, following its $6.5 billion acquisition of applications network powerhouse Mulesoft.
Meanwhile, Microsoft offers automated lifecycle management of applications that run on its Azure cloud even as it shifts to open source. And Amazon Web Services, the cloud subsidiary of the online retailing and logistics behemoth, offers users automation for administration and distributed development.
However, none appear to have taken the automation drive to the level of disruption. To reinforce the commitments made by Oracle executives to double the availability of processing power, at half the price levied by AWS, the global leader in cloud-hosted services, the company is making executive compensation contingent on cloud success.