Cloud Becomes Commonplace Like the Internet

This year's Oracle Cloud Day in Zagreb we used to talk to Janusz Naklicki, Vice President, Oracle Central, Eastern Europe, and CIS, pointing out that public cloud services will become as common as the Internet. He notes that digital cloud computing business transformation is a revolution in the construction and use of IT systems, and adds the key to understanding this process of the concept of "digital communication," enabling better business interaction, by linking people, locations, and things.

What are key technologies and solutions for the customers on the market?

Information technology is progressing so quickly today, which new technology dedicated to ending customers emerge almost every day. However, Oracle attaches the greatest importance to the dynamic growth of cloud computing which is now perceived not as one of “IT trends,“ but as a completely natural phenomenon which is being adopted at an ever increasing pace in the world of business IT. Analyses conducted by Oracle show that the cloud service market is growing ca. 5 times faster than investments in traditional systems. We predict that within a few years, public cloud services will become as common as the Internet. The Cloud gives customers enormous benefits, not only lower costs but also regarding deployment time and data security. Moreover, cloud services are always up-to-date and state-of-the-art, ensuring a very quick return on investment and a big competitive advantage.

In which direction Oracle see the development of technologies?

Today, IT development focuses on providing the best possible customer experience. This is confirmed by IDC research, according to which improving customer satisfaction is a priority for almost 60% of surveyed companies in the CEE region. Such approach is facilitated by many modern technologies, and all of them are related to the cloud computing model. Examples include: using data from social media in IT systems, new access methods based chiefly on mobile devices, real-time business analytics (including Big Data) easily accessible to each user, using the Internet of Things to acquire precise data for managing and controlling business processes, integration of machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies into business applications.

Can you compare Croatian market and other regional countries?  Also Croatia and CEE region, EU?

According to IDC's survey, in Croatia, compared to the other countries from Adriatic region, in 2016 we recorded a slight increase in spending in the segment of IT services and software, but again it is significantly lower than in the CEE countries such as the Czech Republic and Poland which, in the same period show significantly higher consumption growth especially in the segment of solutions such as Big Data, IoT, etc. Taking into account the trends that have recently affected the digital transformation in Croatia, we believe that shortly Croatia will have similar results and the growth of IT service consumption as in the CEE above countries.

Commissioned by Oracle, IDC has also recently conducted the survey on the level of modern digital technologies adoption in Central and Eastern Europe region. The results show that one-third of surveyed companies already use cloud solutions and further 39% plan to implement them or assess the possibility of their implementation. Among surveyed companies with 250-1,000 employees, 40% already use cloud technologies. Almost half of companies with over 2,500 employees and 41% of companies with 1,000-2,500 employees plan to implement them. The rate of adoption of new solutions also depends on the industry. The highest interest in cloud is in the utility sector, with as many as 59% of companies planning to use digital technologies or at least considering such possibility. Other industries keen for adopting cloud technologies are finance (47%) and the public sector including education and healthcare (42%). In the retail, the percentage of interested companies is 40% and in telecommunications 34%. Regarding digital transformation, CEE companies lag behind Western Europe, where as many as 80% of global companies are going to initiate such projects by the end of 2017.

Cloud solutions, digital transformation are something that everybody talks about. What is your opinion on these topics?

Digital business transformation based on cloud computing means a real revolution in building and using IT systems. In the view of Oracle, the digital approach is based on the following pillars like rapid introduction of innovations at any scale, using a wide range of data from multiple sources, implementation of ideas originating from all business departments, rapid deployment of new business models, collaboration, data sharing, and joint development of solutions in digital environments.

The key to understanding that process is the concept of “digital communication,“ i.e. enabling better business interactions thanks to connecting people, places, and things. In a connected enterprise, all services can smoothly communicate with each other in real time, regardless of the location, supported channel, and used data sources. At Oracle, we believe that the capability to easily connect applications and data sources over the on-premise, cloud, and mobile environments (including the increasing range of smart devices) will be of key importance for bringing innovation and improving the customer experience.

Do you see the change in the industry because of IoT, VR, AR...?

The emergence of new digital technologies, such as the Internet of Things, VR, or artificial intelligence, redefines industries in a fundamental way, providing business with new, previously unattainable capabilities. A report by McKinsey Consulting states that: “Digital is fundamentally shifting the competitive landscape in many sectors. It allows new entrants to come from unexpected places. Therefore, every company should expect a sudden emergence of completely new competitors and the traditional boundaries between industries start to vanish.“

Indeed, we already see telecommunications companies selling electricity, banks offering package tours, and on the other hand travel agencies engaged in the insurance business. A similar phenomenon is seen in the retail industry, since we can buy a refrigerator in a computer showroom or a laptop in a household appliance store. We can see emerging companies which completely overturn traditional business models thanks to digitization. Some of them employ methods referred to as “bypasses“, which consist in bypassing classical, established business processes.

Examples include the emergence of 3D printers disrupting the traditional production process, or the Bitcoin currency bypassing international financial institutions. There are also companies able to compete on traditional markets only thanks to information processing, without owning any fixed assets. Typical examples are companies offering services in the “sharing economy“ model, such as Airbnb (real property rental), TaskRabbit (providing minor house services), or SnapGoods (exchange of things).