Adopt Cloud Technologies To Stay Competitive: Oracle

By Muhammad Akmal Mohd Yashin  KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 13 (Bernama) -- Malaysia’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as well as large enterprises have been urged to adopt innovative cloud technologies in order to stay competitive in today’s ever-expanding digital world.   Oracle Malaysia managing director Fitri Abdullah said that in light of Industrial Revolution (IR) 4.0, new technologies including blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of things (IOT) and big data analytics (BDA) have become integral parts in moving towards this goal. “The ambition of the new government is to be the ‘Asian Tiger’. For us to be the ‘Asian Tiger’, they (companies) need to be on top of all these new innovative technologies, so that they can serve the people better and make a difference. "They have to construct a digital transformation plan, or else they will become obsolete and be left behind,” he told Bernama when met on the sidelines of the Oracle Modern Cloud Forum here recently. To help all these companies achieve this goal, he said that ORACLE, the number one provider of business software globally, is keen to engage and work very closely with customers to make sure they have what it takes to face current challenges in this digital landscape. “Our solutions were mainly targeted at large enterprises. But now with cloud (technologies), we can also use the same solutions for SMEs,” he said. Elaborating on BDA, Fitri pointed out that according to The Economist, the most important commodity in the world used to be oil. But today, however, data is taking over. “We do many innovative cloud technologies, but our core strength is data management. We translate the data to information so that we can have better insights on you (customers), and then take further action from there. “That is why people are going into BDA. It transforms how businesses operate and improves their overall competitiveness,” he noted. Other than BDA, Oracle offers a comprehensive stack of cloud services to customers including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and Data as a Service (DaaS). Its products include data visualisation, autonomous data warehouse (ADW), digital assistant, security solutions, blockchain, and many more. Fitri said several Malaysian organisations, including businesses, universities and government  agencies, have embraced Oracle technologies including Mimos, AirAsia, Grab and Johor Port. “In fact, the top four banks in Malaysia are using our big data platform,” he added. Oracle, which operates in over 100 countries across the world, has been in Malaysia for 31 years. -- BERNAMA