Oracle CEO Mark Hurd is generally a quotable guy, and came across no differently this week at Oracle's HCM World conference during keynotes and a session with press and analysts. Hurd took on a range of topics, from Oracle's philosophy around the HCM market to how it's competing with the likes of Amazon Web Services for infrastructure workloads. Here's a look at some of the highlights.
If you thought Oracle was only going after enterprise and midmarket customers with its HCM cloud, you'd be wrong, according to Hurd. In fact, "there is no customer too small we can't reach" with HCM cloud, he said during the opening keynote. Oracle's HCM cloud is growing three times as fast as its next closest competitor, he added, although not specifying whether that was Workday or SAP.
Oracle is learning how to do HCM better by that old standby: Dogfooding its own products. The company has 140,000 employees now and recruits about 20,000 per year. It's a highly complex process made harder by the fact Oracle is seeking out top technical talent in high demand, Hurd said. It also places great emphasis on training, particularly given the sizable numbers of workers it's been recruiting straight out of college.
Training extends to the management layer as well, in a crucial way, Hurd added. "People don't typically leave companies. They leave managers." There are 18,000 managers at Oracle today.
As a result, Oracle is battle-testing its HCM suite as much as any company could, he said. However, as he noted: "[HCM] is not an app. It's a strategy, it's a process."
Going back to the early days of Fusion Applications, Oracle has pushed a "co-existence" strategy, wherein customers with ample on-premises software implementations are encouraged to adopt cloud-based, complementary modules at their own pace. Hurd continued this messaging at HCM World, noting that PeopleSoft 9.2, which was initially released four years ago, saw many customers choose to undergo the on-premises upgrade. But those same customers have been adding cloud HCM apps to their mix, he added.
Oracle has been seeing HCM deals come together as add-ons to its cloud ERP sales, Hurd said. Fifty percent of Oracle's cloud ERP customers never had an Oracle ERP system before, and the deals are largely being driven by CFOs, he added.
While the event focused on applications, Hurd discussed Oracle's foray into IaaS (infrastructure as a service) during a session with analysts and press. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that while Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google collectively had more than $31 billion in capital expenditures last year, of which the bulk presumably went toward data center development. In contrast, Oracle had $1.7 billion in capex last year.
Asked about the disparity, particularly when one considers how far behind those IaaS market leaders Oracle is at present, Hurd replied
"It's an such an interesting thesis that whoever has the most capex wins," he said. Oracle's Gen2 data center infrastructure is so efficient that Oracle doesn't need to build out as much raw data center real estate as the competition, Hurd contended.
MyPOV: Hurd's job is to drive Oracle cloud sales and with HCM, the messaging needs to de-emphasize technical matters and focus on business value. Judging from Hurd and other Oracle executives' presentations at HCM World, they are succeeding.
It was also notable how much Oracle put HCM customers, and not corporate spokespeople, on the stage to discuss their projects. Oracle even launched an HCM customer innovation award program at the event, honoring dozens of companies spanning a wide variety of industries. Underscoring the human element, Hurd noted how important customer references are when it comes to HCM sales. "Customers would rather buy from another customer than from us."
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