The COLLABORATE 17 conference is under way now in Las Vegas. One of the notable things about COLLABORATE is that Oracle customers get to talk to other Oracle customers about their real-life business and technology challenges, lessons learned, and best practices. I had the privilege of overhearing some amazing, valuable conversations.
In case you missed it or did not make it to the conference, here are few things I heard customers talking about.
Product Roadmaps – Many attendees in a wide range of job roles wonder about what, why, and how they should plan to deploy new capabilities in their on–premises and cloud software applications. Roadmap sessions being tomorrow.
Cloud Augmentation or Migration – Many attendees focused on “why” and “how” questions. Some of the hottest topics I overheard were about reengineering on-premises customizations, building integrations with legacy systems, and agile testing that fits frequent software updates. On the technology side, bring in to the process early your enterprise security specialists so that last-minute access control and compliance tasks do not delay a successful launch.
Change Management – Customers need business process analysis more than ever. One recommendation from several customers is that early in the planning process, bring together your business users to evaluate current needs for customizations and integrations. It may be that some legacy processes no longer need particular steps or software modifications. In fact, standardizing low-value tasks that are not competitive differentiators will make it easier to take more-frequent updates from for on-premises and cloud software product lines.
Business Process Optimization – Some customers are taking advantage of the challenges to optimize and simplify their business processes. Other customers are finding that their potential for simplifying processes is constrained by the need to produce value quickly in new IT projects.
Some business and IT leaders see parallels with 1990s-type integration and process reengineering. Many customers see a proliferation of clouds within their organizations. Making things work well together can be complex. Making processes run smoothly is another challenge since the number of points of possible technology failure is increasing.
What is Really Important? One of the highlights of the day was the “meeting of the Members” keynote by Wendy Plante, Quest’s Chairwoman and Sr. Director – Finance Enterprise Solutions NYU Langone Health System. Using a hilarious recap of her recent household move as an allegory, Wendy encouraged members to embrace and take advantage of opportunities to change. One IT leader I spoke with said he was reminded to focus his work energies most on activities that will make a difference in the business. That’s a useful reminder.
Learn More, Do More – Stay tuned for highlights of how customers attending COLLABORATE are discovering ways to take advantage of changing technology to do better things and do things better.