A Look at Oracle’s “AI” Use Cases, Strengths and Challenges and When to Expect Which Apps
The introduction of Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Apps was among the most significant of the many announcements at Oracle OpenWorld 2016. Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Apps represent the company’s first foray into the realm of artificial intelligence (AI).Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Apps are not a stab at “general AI” or “strong AI” systems that attempt human-like perception, thinking and action. Rather they’re practical, business apps that tap focused AI capabilities such as machine learning, natural language understanding, and predictive reasoning. The goal is to assist, not replace, humans by delivering personalized content or recommendations or by automating actions.
Downplaying the term “artificial intelligence,” Oracle says its apps are adaptive in that they continually capture and learn from new data as it is generated. They’re intelligent in that they tap transactional and behavioral history as well as real-time interactions and real-world conditions, including time, weather and location.
At this writing, Oracle has five apps on its public Adaptive Intelligent App roadmap. Entirely cloud- based, the apps are to be integrated with the Oracle Customer Experience (CX) Cloud and the Human Resources (HR), Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) clouds. The roadmap covers all of Oracle’s major cloud application categories, a signal that the company intends to deliver a broad and growing portfolio of Adaptive Intelligent Apps. On the record, Oracle executives say that the apps will be introduced within 12 to 18 months of Oracle OpenWorld 2016. However, Constellation expects the first CX app to be introduced by year-end 2016 with two more apps to follow by mid-2017.
A key asset behind these new apps is the Oracle Data Cloud, which offers some 5 billion consumer profiles, 400 million professional profiles and 100 million business profiles. This data is already modeled and ready for use in sales, marketing and service applications. One of the challenges ahead for Oracle will be applying data science to take advantage of this web-scale data in SCM, ERP and cross-enterprise applications. Oracle will also be able to exploit its hyper-scale Oracle Cloud computing capacity, but the company will need time to build out the comprehensive Adaptive Intelligent App portfolio envisioned.