Oracle's big IoT play: Among large software vendors, Oracle hasn't made quite as much noise about IoT as some others. That has just changed with a pair of announcements it made this week that serve to flesh out its IoT strategy in some detail.
The big news concerns new AI and machine learning capabilities in Oracle's IoT Cloud service. These power so-called digital twins—digital representations of an IoT device or process—as well as what Oracle calls "digital threads," which focus on supply chain:
Supply Chain practitioners have spent millions of dollars in implementing SCM and ERP systems, but most often, data is manually fed into these systems. Digital Thread is a connected business process framework that leverages IoT and creates a "system of systems" by connecting traditionally siloed elements in real-time throughout the digital supply chain.
Oracle also unveiled three new industry IoT applications covering field service, connected factories and fleet management scenarios. These join previously released IoT apps for asset monitoring, connected workforce and other areas.
In addition, Oracle announced it has worked with Mitsubishi Electric on an IoT platform for smart manufacturing. Dubbed FA-IT Open Platform, it employs edge computing to collect and analyze data from production sites, and is built with a number of Oracle technologies including its database, Java, BI, IoT and SOA cloud services.
POV: The Mitsubishi announcement may be more of a customer win story, but it's a significant one and should provide market validation for Oracle's IoT stack. Overall, the company is a bit overdue in fleshing out its IoT story, but clearly things have been in the works behind the scenes, says Constellation VP and principal analyst Holger Mueller.
"It's good to see the digital twin concept taking hold with all ERP vendors that have IoT offerings," he adds. "The digital thread is a new concept and makes sense. We will see where it goes from here. While Oracle's plans for IoT weren't that clear and tangible, they have become clearer now."
Expect IoT to be a big focus at Oracle's upcoming OpenWorld conference in early October.
Salesforce and IBM's practical partnership: Back in March, Salesforce and IBM announced a global strategic partnership and this week unveiled some fruits of that labor, which surprisingly, don't have the words Watson or Einstein printed anywhere on them.
Rather, the companies announced three joint offerings: An tie-up between Salesforce and IBM's cloud integration platform, for creating data flows in and out of Salesforce and both cloud and on-premises sources; Salesforce Garage, new customer engagement centers backed by IBM's Bluewolf consulting group, which was one of the largest Salesforce systems integrators before Big Blue bought it in 2016; and three Salesforce Lightning components that bring IBM's Weather Insights analytics services to Salesforce users.
POV: All three announcements are "devoid of AI sizzle and focus instead on practical solutions that will make it easier for joint IBM and Salesforce customers to do more in the cloud and drive data-driven insights," says Constellation VP and principal analyst Doug Henschen.
The cloud integration has obvious appeal, Henschen adds. "Many IBM customers began their cloud journeys by embracing Salesforce for front-office functionality," he says. "IBM's emphasis has been on bringing the rest of the enterprise into the cloud." With the new integration, it will be easier to bring back-office data and systems together with Salesforce's sales, service, marketing and communities applications.
IBM signaled its intent to work more closely with Salesforce when it bought Bluewolf, and the new garages will help Bluewolf more effectively deliver its design-thinking methodologies and project delivery experience. Finally, the weather analytics components "would seem to offer easy and practical ways to put weather insights to day-to-day use in contexts as obvious as insurance claims and as routine as scheduling sales and service calls," Henschen says.
Key takeaways from Workday's Q2: Workday released its second-quarter numbers this week and they were strong, with revenue rising 42 percent to $434.5 million while losses narrowed to 40 cents a share compared to 55 cents per share in the same quarter last year. Often some of the most telling news from a company's quarterly earnings comes not in the press release, but on the conference call with analysts. Here are a few highlights.
- More than 30 percent of the Fortune 500 and 17 of the Fortune 50 are now Workday core HR customers, CEO Aneel Bhusri said on the call.
- Siemens is replacing its current HR system with Workday HCM, Bhusri said. A massive customer win to say the least.
- Workday is continuously refining its implementation methodology and is now seeing Fortune 500 companies going into production in about a year.
- In July, Workday announced its PaaS strategy. This was of note, since Workday's platform historically has been tightly closed off. Since then, Workday has held two hackathons and the interest level in those from customers and partners has validated the move toward PaaS, Bhusri said.
- Initially, Workday will focus its PaaS on customers extending its applications, but in the longer term "we definitely see an independent software vendor opportunity," Bhusri said. "I think we will be very careful with that. We know we are not looking to get into a whole host of different areas, but as an example, if we came across a group that wanted to build supply chain and manufacturing systems or another industry-specific system that we have a long-term view on ... we know we would welcome that."
POV: The Workday Rising conference is coming up in October and that's where customers can expect to hear many more specifics about Workday's PaaS, perhaps including pricing and availability. Constellation will be in attendance; expect our full report after the event.