At Oracle's four-day CloudWorld 2023 conference this week in Las Vegas, the software company touted expanded collaborations with Microsoft and Red Hat, announced new development capabilities for its cloud infrastructure, and outlined how generative AI and enhanced workplace management tools will improve the healthcare industry.
Oracle CEO Safra Catz, who delivered Tuesday morning's keynote address, described Oracle's philosophy behind these initiatives as, "Putting customer success at the heart of everything."
The top announcements from Oracle CloudWorld 2023 are below.
Generative AI
Oracle unveiled new features and platforms this week that seek to build on the potential of generative AI. These include:
- Marketing, sales, and service applications for Oracle Fusion Cloud Customer Experience (CX) to automate the generation of guided content, product recommendations, and insights.
- New AI capabilities for Oracle Analytics Cloud, optimizing customer service delivery and experience.
- The Fusion Data Intelligence Platform, which will provide enhanced data and analytics to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) customers.
Other New Features
AI was not the only source of innovation Oracle trumpeted this week. The company also revealed features to help IT professionals and developers.
- Updates to Oracle Access Governance help IT teams better assign, monitor, and manage user access.
- New application development capabilities enable developers to rapidly build and deploy applications.
- New services help financial institutions improve visibility and forecasting, and better control liquidity.
Partnerships
Highlighting the company's "customer wins," Oracle announced a slew of new integrations and partnerships at CloudWorld 2023:
- Red Bull Ford Powertrains' sustainable fuel engine will rely on OCI beginning in the 2026 race season.
- Mastercard is partnering with Oracle to automate payment transactions.
- Technology and security provider Thales launched CipherTrust Cloud Key Management integration across all 45 Oracle Cloud Regions, enabling OCI customers to store and manage their encryption keys in a virtual or physical appliance outside of the cloud.
- Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians will standardize its business and government operations on Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications Suite.
- Workforce management company TrueBlue has consolidated its 20 business systems under Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications Suite.
- Higher education institutions, including Navarro College and Pittsburg State University, are deploying Oracle Student, to improve the higher ed experience.
- Loblaw, Canada's largest retailer, is modernizing its IT infrastructure with OCI.
- Oracle Retail's platform received a bump with the announcement of "Collect and Receive," a collaboration between Uber and Oracle enabling same-day delivery as a delivery-scheduling option for retailers and their customers.
- Australian wealth management company AMP aims to boost employee productivity and experience with Oracle Cloud HCM (Human Capital Management).
Expansions
The software giant also announced the expansion of existing partnerships, including:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux support for OCI and Oracle VMware Cloud workloads.
- MySQL HeatWave Lakehouse will now be available to AWS customers, consolidating transaction processing, analytics, and machine learning in one service.
- Enhancements to MySQL HeatWave include support for vector store and generative AI, MySQL Autopilot enhancements, support for JavaScript, and support for new analytic operators.
Healthcare
Synchronized with Oracle's Health Conference, the company spotlighted new healthcare-specific capabilities, including:
- The Oracle Clinical Digital Assistant, a generative AI tool to simplify administrative tasks, provide in-session note-taking, and suggest context-aware actions, such as ordering medication or scheduling follow-up appointments.
- New and enhanced cloud offerings that enable organizations to automate resource planning, reduce the cost of supplies with group purchasing options, and address supply chain challenges by predicting surges in demand for medical supplies.
- A workforce scheduling and optimization tool to consolidate electronic health record data on a single platform.
Oracle also announced new partnerships in the healthcare industry, including contracts to modernize Tenet Healthcare's HR and payroll processes and consolidate the not-for-profit Providence's business systems.
