US technology company Oracle announced a series of new cloud-focused products at Oracle Cloud World on Tuesday as it wrestles for market share with companies such as Amazon Web Service and Microsoft.
The new solutions unveiled at the event in Las Vegas, Nevada, aim to help customers to accelerate digital transformation, boost product offerings, improve customer experience and make faster decisions through the improved use of data and analytics.
It also rolled out Oracle Alloy — a cloud infrastructure platform that enables organisations such as financial institutions and telecoms providers to also become cloud providers and offer new services to customers.
Moving slowly is too dangerous ... moving quickly and boldly is important to bring the positive change to business
Safra Catz,
Oracle’s chief executive
“Over the past few years at Oracle, we have been busy,” Safra Catz, Oracle’s chief executive, said during her address.
“We have built a platform that is most secure, most sustainable and also most cost efficient.
“Moving slowly is too dangerous … moving quickly [to the cloud] and boldly is important to bring the positive change to business.”
But factors such as security, governance and stringent guidelines for data protection across highly regulated industries and borders are some of the common challenges that businesses face while moving their operations to the cloud.
“Organisations want to move their workloads to the cloud, but are often facing multiple hurdles,” said Clay Magouyrk, executive vice president of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
“With OCI’s distributed cloud, we are able to give our customers the flexibility they need to deploy cloud services wherever they choose … we are ultimately changing the way our customers think about the cloud.”
Oracle’s stock was trading slightly down at $66.74 at 2pm New York time. It has dropped nearly 30 per cent in the past 12 months.
Oracle’s distributed cloud offers customers the flexibility needed to access services from anywhere through public, multi-cloud, hybrid and dedicated options.
A wide range of factors, including requirements for low-latency connections in specific locations and regulations for managing sensitive data, are increasing customer demand for flexibility in their cloud deployments, industry experts said.
Globally, the cloud industry is booming: spending on public cloud services is expected to jump 20.4 per cent annually to $495 billion this year, as businesses expedite the pace of their digital transformation in the post-Covid era, US researcher Gartner said.
Total spending is about $84bn more than in 2020 and is expected to surge nearly 21.3 per cent yearly to almost $600bn next year.
For businesses, moving to a cloud system hosted by a specialised company — such as Oracle, Amazon Web Services or SAP — is more economical than creating their own infrastructure of servers, hardware and security networks, industry experts said. It also brings down the overall cost of ownership.
We view cloud computing as an operating model for IT that transcends a single location type ... customers want the benefits of cloud computing across multiple deployment models
Chris Kanaracus,
research director at IDC
In the cloud industry, businesses pay only for those selective services or resources that they use over a period of time.
The new reality of hybrid work is prompting organisations to “move away from powering their workforce with traditional client computing solutions, such as desktops and other physical in-office tools”, and opt for the latest cloud solutions, Gartner said.
“We view cloud computing as an operating model for IT that transcends a single location type … customers want the benefits of cloud computing across multiple deployment models and Oracle is seeking to meet this need,” said Chris Kanaracus, research director at Massachusetts-based researcher International Data Corporation.
“With these expanded OCI offerings, Oracle recognises that customers want flexibility, interoperability and sovereign cloud capabilities from their strategic providers,” Mr Kanaracus said.
To help businesses make faster decisions, Oracle also announced a series of new product innovations across its portfolio of data and analytics solutions.
With the new additions, the company said it can now offer decision-makers a pre-built library of more than 2,000 best-practice KPIs, dashboards and reports to monitor performance against strategic goals.
The Texas-headquartered company currently operates 40 commercial and government cloud regions across 22 countries on five continents.
It has introduced 10 public cloud regions over the past year and has plans to add six commercial regions in Chicago (the US), Serbia, Colombia, Chile, Saudi Arabia and Mexico in the coming months, the company said.
A cloud region is a complex that houses at least two data centres.
What is Oracle Alloy?
Oracle Alloy is a new cloud infrastructure platform that enables service providers, integrators, independent software vendors and other organisations to offer new cloud services to their customers.
“The organisations can offer a full set of cloud services … and package additional value-added services and applications to meet the specific needs of their markets and industry verticals,” Oracle said.
“[They] can also use Alloy independently in their own data centres and fully control its operations to help address specific regulatory requirements.”
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The bio
Favourite book: Peter Rabbit. I used to read it to my three children and still read it myself. If I am feeling down it brings back good memories.
Best thing about your job: Getting to help people. My mum always told me never to pass up an opportunity to do a good deed.
Best part of life in the UAE: The weather. The constant sunshine is amazing and there is always something to do, you have so many options when it comes to how to spend your day.
Favourite holiday destination: Malaysia. I went there for my honeymoon and ended up volunteering to teach local children for a few hours each day. It is such a special place and I plan to retire there one day.
MATCH INFO
Who: UAE v USA
What: first T20 international
When: Friday, 2pm
Where: ICC Academy in Dubai
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
UAE%20v%20West%20Indies
%3Cp%3EFirst%20ODI%20-%20Sunday%2C%20June%204%20%0D%3Cbr%3ESecond%20ODI%20-%20Tuesday%2C%20June%206%20%0D%3Cbr%3EThird%20ODI%20-%20Friday%2C%20June%209%26nbsp%3B%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EMatches%20at%20Sharjah%20Cricket%20Stadium.%20All%20games%20start%20at%204.30pm%0D%3Cbr%3E%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EUAE%20squad%3C%2Fstrong%3E%0D%3Cbr%3EMuhammad%20Waseem%20(captain)%2C%20Aayan%20Khan%2C%20Adithya%20Shetty%2C%20Ali%20Naseer%2C%20Ansh%20Tandon%2C%20Aryansh%20Sharma%2C%20Asif%20Khan%2C%20Basil%20Hameed%2C%20Ethan%20D%E2%80%99Souza%2C%20Fahad%20Nawaz%2C%20Jonathan%20Figy%2C%20Junaid%20Siddique%2C%20Karthik%20Meiyappan%2C%20Lovepreet%20Singh%2C%20Matiullah%2C%20Mohammed%20Faraazuddin%2C%20Muhammad%20Jawadullah%2C%20Rameez%20Shahzad%2C%20Rohan%20Mustafa%2C%20Sanchit%20Sharma%2C%20Vriitya%20Aravind%2C%20Zahoor%20Khan%0D%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
THE%20SPECS
%3Cp%3EEngine%3A%203-litre%20V6%20turbo%20(standard%20model%2C%20E-hybrid)%3B%204-litre%20V8%20biturbo%20(S)%0D%3Cbr%3EPower%3A%20350hp%20(standard)%3B%20463hp%20(E-hybrid)%3B%20467hp%20(S)%0D%3Cbr%3ETorque%3A%20500Nm%20(standard)%3B%20650Nm%20(E-hybrid)%3B%20600Nm%20(S)%0D%0D%3Cbr%3EPrice%3A%20From%20Dh368%2C500%0D%3Cbr%3EOn%20sale%3A%20Now%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Groom and Two Brides
Director: Elie Semaan
Starring: Abdullah Boushehri, Laila Abdallah, Lulwa Almulla
Rating: 3/5
Simran
Director Hansal Mehta
Stars: Kangana Ranaut, Soham Shah, Esha Tiwari Pandey
Three stars
ULTRA PROCESSED FOODS
- Carbonated drinks, sweet or savoury packaged snacks, confectionery, mass-produced packaged breads and buns
- Margarines and spreads; cookies, biscuits, pastries, cakes, and cake mixes, breakfast cereals, cereal and energy bars
- Energy drinks, milk drinks, fruit yoghurts and fruit drinks, cocoa drinks, meat and chicken extracts and instant sauces
- Infant formulas and follow-on milks, health and slimming products such as powdered or fortified meal and dish substitutes
- Many ready-to-heat products including pre-prepared pies and pasta and pizza dishes, poultry and fish nuggets and sticks, sausages, burgers, hot dogs, and other reconstituted meat products, powdered and packaged instant soups, noodles and desserts
Who's who in Yemen conflict
Houthis: Iran-backed rebels who occupy Sanaa and run unrecognised government
Yemeni government: Exiled government in Aden led by eight-member Presidential Leadership Council
Southern Transitional Council: Faction in Yemeni government that seeks autonomy for the south
Habrish 'rebels': Tribal-backed forces feuding with STC over control of oil in government territory
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Klopp at the Kop
Matches 68; Wins 35; Draws 19; Losses 14; Goals For 133; Goals Against 82
- Eighth place in Premier League in 2015/16
- Runners-up in Europa League in 2016
- Runners-up in League Cup in 2016
- Fourth place in Premier League in 2016/17
The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre, twin-turbocharged V8
Transmission: nine-speed automatic
Power: 630bhp
Torque: 900Nm
Price: Dh810,000
