Oracle OpenWorld 2017 is now in full swing, dominating the street views of much of San Francisco with more than 60,000 attendees. Amidst numerous keynotes, roadmap presentations, and other educational sessions, Oracle has released more than two dozen product announcements – so far.

What are the most important things we have heard at OpenWorld? We have filtered and aggregated a hefty amount of content to give you a quick snapshot of what matters most. Keep reading to learn more about:

• Customers’ Cloud Journeys
• The Future of Data and Business Applications
• PeopleSoft Product Investments

Customers’ Cloud Journeys

Quest hosted on Sunday a dialog among customers about their cloud journeys, ranging from SaaS application integration to infrastructure migration (IaaS) and platform extension (PaaS). We asked customers to share what is working, what they learned and what concerns they have.

Data migration and integration is top of mind for many. A few attendees currently use Oracle’s Integration cloud Services or competing products, which promise to ease the efforts. One lesson shared by several customers is that “call backs” processing is important and needs evaluation early into projects.

Application and data security is another hot topic. Several customers shared that it is harder than they would like to identify security conflicts among user roles. Furthermore, a frequent concern is that standard roles may give some users more access rights off the shelf than is desired. A common root factor is that with short cloud implementation timeframes, user access is evaluated and provisioned with haste. For some customers, a further challenge is understanding and configuring data access across geographic locations.

Many customers found that cloud journeys provided new opportunities and also dictate revisions to business processes. A common lesson shared was to not move existing on-premises customizations to the cloud. Instead, use stock functions wherever possible. The benefits include reducing the rework with new releases, as well as eliminating low value legacy customizations.

What do all these cloud changes mean for customers’ IT staffing? There will be an ongoing need for internal business analysts, product configurators and integration specialists. The focus among IT teams will decrease in system administration and related programming skills, while increasing strategic, innovative and business process-related skills.

What’s Next

In “Oracle Cloud and the Future of Data,” the big news was a pair of announcements by Larry Ellison (CTO and Executive Chairman) about upcoming Cloud database releases that provide autonomous database administration and highly-automated database security.  As Larry explained, this will mean:

• Less time on administration – infrastructure, patching, upgrades, availability, and tuning
• More time on innovation – database design, analytics, policies, and security

Mark Hurd (co-CEO) spoke on “The Cloud: Transformational. Innovative. Foundational.” Once again he released his annual predictions for 2025. He noted that last year’s predictions were too conservative when compared with subsequent realities. This year’s top predictions are:

• 100% of application development and testing will be conducted in the cloud.
• 80% of production apps will be in the cloud.
• 80% of IT budgets will be spent on cloud services.
• 80% of IT budgets will be spent on business innovation, and only 20% on system maintenance.
• All enterprise data will be stored in the cloud.
• Enterprise clouds will be the most secure place for IT processing.

Mark explained that Oracle’s strategy is to build what customers need to either move to the cloud or start in the cloud. He noted that in the past five years, Oracle released 3,500 SaaS services and 125 PaaS services, which Mark says makes Oracle’s set of offerings “the most complete cloud in the industry.”

Adaptive intelligence within applications is another key focus for Oracle. At the Media/Press Q&A session, Mark shared that “AI can’t be a discrete solution in search of a problem. Oracle bakes it into all our apps.” So, expect more machine learning to be delivered off the shelf from Oracle, served up to fit the context of user interactions, data values, and alerts.

In “Get Ahead of Digital Disruption with Oracle’s Next-Generation Business Apps,” Steve Miranda (Executive VP of Applications Product Development) shared about how many of the digital disruptions he spoke about two years ago, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), have matured rapidly. Similarly, the innovations that are top of mind today will be supplanted in the next couple of years.

So, what is this “next generation” of applications all about? Steve says, the speed of business agility is the “next big thing.” Data is the fundamental basis for making improvements in applications, according to Miranda, and cloud is the chief enable of rapid change deployment in an organization. Along with the cloud, customers will become more agile by deploying machine learning, blockchain, and the Internet of Things.

Steve’s recommendation to customers is to think about moving soon to cloud applications. He spoke about the cost of waiting. Others have said that the longer you wait, the further ahead your company’s competitors will be.

Learn More, Do More

Stay tuned for more blog posts from Oracle OpenWorld.

Learn even more with Oracle Cloud Collaborate Conference content. COLLABORATE 18 features a wide variety of education and networking opportunities selected by users like you, making it a very useful Oracle conference. More than 275 sessions covering Cloud, Big Data, Mobility, and security make this a valuable, jammed packed week to help you get the most out of your Oracle Cloud investment. Think collaborate 2018, which some call the Oracle collaborate cloud conference. Follow us for the latest news on Twitter at #c18lv.