Oracle Unleashes Cloud Blockchain Service And New AI Apps & Tools

Oracle used the second day of its annual OpenWorld conference in San Francisco to detail a new based Blockchain service and AI applications as it looks to infuse its cloud services with future technologies.

The database and software giant has doubled down on its cloud strategy in the past few years and CEO Mark Hurd was at pains to stress the need to migrate, having previously described the transition as a decade-long process.

He said that by 2025, all app development and testing would be done in the cloud, which would also host all enterprise data and 80 percent of all production apps. This, he argued would allow organisations to spend as much as four fifths of their budget on innovation, rather than maintenance.

“It’s important to have great apps, but great apps that work together, the most complete suite of PaaS services and the next generation of infrastructure as a service that all work together to complement each other,” said Hurd, boasting that over the past five years, Oracle had released more than 3,500 SaaS  and 125 PaaS services. “That’s what we’ve built out, and that’s what we now have.”

Oracle Blockchain

First up is the Oracle Blockchain Cloud service, an “enterprise-grade” distributed ledger cloud that claims to deliver all the promised benefits of the system that powered Bitcoin by lowering the costs of transactions and making them tamper-proof.

Oracle said this would apply across firms’ ERP, supply chain and other cloud and on-premise applications, delivering new revenue streams and boosting security. It will also be offered as part of the Oracle Platform for Open Banking.

In the spirit of its recent commitments to openness, Oracle recently joined Hyperledger, a Linux Foundation-hosted project that aims to develop open and innovative Blockchain technologies.

“Blockchain holds the promise to fundamentally transform how business is done, making business-to-business interactions more secure, transparent, and efficient,” added Amit Zavery, head of Oracle Cloud Platform.

“Oracle Blockchain Cloud Service provides enterprise-grade blockchain capabilities and is able to accelerate innovation for on-premises ERP and cloud-based SaaS and PaaS customers. Enterprises can now streamline operations across their ecosystem and expand their market reach with new revenue streams, sharing data and transacting within and outside the Oracle Cloud.”

Oracle AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is never far away from any major tech conference and Oracle OpenWorld is no different.

The company’s new AI-based applications for finance, HR, supply chain, manufacturing, commerce, customer service, marketing and sales professionals work with existing Oracle cloud services, including Oracle ERP Cloud and Oracle Experience Cloud.

The ‘Advanced Intelligent Apps’ use the Oracle Data Cloud, which collects 7.5 trillion data points from five billion customer and business IDs each month, and organisation’s own data to learn and make improvements.

“The new AI capabilities combine first- and third-party data with advanced machine learning and sophisticated decision science to deliver the industry’s most powerful AI-based modern business applications,” declared Steve Miranda, head of application development at Oracle.

Oracle has also added chatbot capabilities o the Oracle Mobile cloud. Customers will be able to create customer-facing bots that can hold conversations using natural language and machine learning capabilities.

The Oracle AI Platform Cloud Service ofers an environment to create AI applications and features of existing software, with the company claiming that only it can deliver a “pervasive” approach to AI.

On the first day of OpenWorld, former CEO and current CTO Larry Ellison revealed a fully autonomous database platform that can patch and adjust itself, as well as updates to its Exadata platform.

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