Oracle today announced it was positioned highest for ability to execute and furthest for completeness of vision in Gartner’s 2019 “Magic Quadrant for Data Management Solutions for Analytics” report¹.

Oracle’s leadership in data management emanates from its deep portfolio of database management solutions, including the self-driving Oracle Autonomous Database. Oracle believes these innovations enabled the company to be positioned 13 consecutive times as a Leader in this report.

“Oracle is proud to be positioned highest for ability to execute and furthest for completeness of vision in Gartner's 2019 Magic Quadrant for Data Management Solutions for Analytics," said Andrew Mendelsohn, Executive Vice President, Oracle Database Server Technologies. "Oracle's self-driving Autonomous Data Warehouse combines the power of a Data Warehouse with the flexibility of Big Data to drive all analytic data management use cases."

Oracle Autonomous Database consists of Oracle Autonomous Transaction Processing, optimized for running transactions and mixed workloads, and Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse for running analytic database workloads. Both options of autonomous database offer self-driving, self-securing, and self-repairing capabilities that can automatically discover threats and remediate them while the database is running. Oracle Autonomous Database can help customers dramatically improve data security, be more efficient in the face of budget constraints, and quickly drive innovation that creates a competitive advantage.

Download a complimentary copy of Gartner’s 2019 Magic Quadrant Data Management Solution for Analytics here.

[1] Source: Gartner, Magic Quadrant Data Management Solution for Analytics, Adam Ronthal, Roxane Edjlali, Rick Greenwald, 21 January 2019.

In my conversations with customers, they almost always talk about change. This change—in technology, in expectations, in their businesses, and in their teams—is not unusual, but as I am sure you have seen, its impact is growing.

That’s why we made a change ourselves. In the past, we held separate events for different business audiences. This year we wanted to create an applications community that reflects the way you work—with integrated systems across departments and business units, no matter the size, industry, or location of your organization.

And that’s exactly why we are hosting Modern Business Experience (MBX) and Modern Customer Experience (MCX) in Las Vegas next week. At these two co-located events, we are bringing together marketing, sales, and service with HR, finance, and supply chain, because we are seeing more and more similarities between each area. Of course, the specifics are incredibly important and change significantly, but whether I am speaking with finance, supply chain, or marketing leaders, the same themes keep coming up. See if they sound familiar to you:

1. Changing expectations: You’re trying to stay ahead of changing expectations. Not just from customers, but from employees, partners, and a myriad of other stakeholders. And we all know the catch. Expectations are not only skyrocketing, but are constantly evolving. It’s a moving target.

2. Adaptable Organizations: As things erupt externally, you are feeling some of the same turmoil internally. Are your teams in flux? Are your employees’ roles, skill sets, and positions changing to meet the needs of today’s experience and service-driven economy? If they aren’t, they will be soon.

3. Humans + Machines: Emerging technology is coming, but you’re not sure how or when. I see artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) reshaping workforces, improving decision making, accelerating processes, and driving efficiencies. Machines are freeing up business users to be more creative problem solvers, and this is changing the working relationship between people and technology.

Our customers (including you) are facing some very real challenges—staying ahead of changing expectations, building adaptable organizations, and realizing the potential of the latest innovations. To turn these challenges into opportunities, we are focused on five key areas:

Your experience: It’s all about you. We are committed to partnering with you to tackle your most complex challenges, help run your operations, and help you achieve the best business outcomes.

Most complete suite of apps: We don’t want you to have to compromise by choosing between breadth and depth. That’s why we are committed to providing one, integrated, best-of-breed applications suite, which brings teams together, creates a single source of truth, leverages data to its fullest, and drives end-to-end business innovation.

Best technology: We want to help you eliminate IT complexity so you can focus on what matters to your business. This means providing you with bullet-proof security, high-end scalability, mission-critical performance, and strong integration capabilities. You shouldn’t have to worry about how it all works.

Speed of innovation: We want to help you stay ahead of constantly changing expectations and business demands. To do this we send continuous product updates to keep you ahead of the latest innovation cycle. We’ve also infused the suite with AI/ML capabilities. The result: quick value and a leg up on the competition.

Modern UX: We want to make using enterprise technology as engaging and intuitive as possible. No matter the device, we deliver a simple yet powerful user experience. And across the organization structure, everyone gets a unified experience, which can be personalized.

We will be sharing the latest on each of these areas at the events through customers, partners, and sessions. We promise that you will walk away with a much better understanding of what emerging technologies can do for your business and why the time for being in the cloud is now. And, Magic Johnson promises to keep things lively—he and I will wrap things up on Thursday noon. I’ll be the short one.

Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL) today announced fiscal 2019 Q3 results. Total Revenues were $9.6 billion, down 1% in USD and up 3% in constant currency compared to Q3 last year. Cloud Services and License Support revenues were $6.7 billion, while Cloud License and On-Premise License revenues were $1.3 billion. Total Cloud Services and License Support plus Cloud License and On-Premise License revenues were $7.9 billion, unchanged in USD and up 3% in constant currency.

GAAP Operating Income was up 3% to $3.4 billion and GAAP Operating Margin was 35%. Non-GAAP Operating Income was up 2% to $4.3 billion and non-GAAP Operating Margin was 44%. GAAP Net Income increased to $2.7 billion and non-GAAP Net Income was down 8% to $3.2 billion. GAAP Earnings Per Share increased to $0.76 while non-GAAP Earnings Per Share was up 8% to $0.87.

Short-term deferred revenues were up 1% to $8.0 billion compared to a year ago. Operating Cash Flow was $14.8 billion during the trailing twelve months.

“I’m pleased with Q3 non-GAAP results as revenues grew 3%, operating income increased 5% and EPS grew 12% in constant currency,” said Oracle CEO, Safra Catz. “Our overall operating margin improved to 44% as our lower margin hardware business continued to get smaller while our higher margin cloud business continued to get bigger. With year-to-date non-GAAP EPS growth rate now at 16% in constant currency, we will comfortably deliver another year of double-digit EPS growth.”

“Our Fusion HCM, ERP, Supply Chain and Manufacturing Cloud applications revenue in total grew 32% in Q3,” said Oracle CEO, Mark Hurd. “Our NetSuite ERP Cloud applications also delivered strong results with a revenue growth rate of 30%. That said, let me call your attention to the following approved statement about Oracle’s entire applications business from industry analyst IDC.”

Per IDC’s latest annual market share results, Oracle is the #1 Enterprise Applications vendor in North America based on market share and revenue, surpassing Salesforce.com and SAP. 

Source: IDC Semiannual Software Tracker, Oct. 2018. Market share and revenue for 2H2017-1H2018. North America is the USA and Canada. Enterprise Applications refer to the IDC markets CRM, Enterprise Resource Management (including HCM, Financials, Procurement, Order Management, PPM, EAM), SCM, and Production Applications.

“The future of Oracle’s Cloud Infrastructure business rests upon our highly-secure Gen2 Cloud Infrastructure featuring the world’s first and only Autonomous Database,” said Oracle CTO, Larry Ellison. “By the end of Q3 we had nearly 1,000 paying Autonomous Database customers and we added around 4,000 new Autonomous Database trials in Q3. It’s early days, but this is the most successful introduction of a new product in Oracle’s forty year history.”

Oracle also announced that its Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.24 per share of outstanding common stock, reflecting a 26% increase over the current quarterly dividend of $0.19.  Larry Ellison, Oracle’s Chairman of the Board, Chief Technology Officer and largest stockholder, did not participate in the deliberation or the vote on this matter.  This increased dividend will be paid to stockholders of record as of the close of business on April 11, 2019, with a payment date of April 25, 2019.

Q3 Fiscal 2019 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast

Oracle will hold a conference call and webcast today to discuss these results at 2:00 p.m. Pacific. You may listen to the call by dialing (816) 287-5563, Passcode: 425392. To access the live webcast, please visit the Oracle Investor Relations website at http://www.oracle.com/investor. In addition, Oracle’s Q3 results and fiscal 2019 financial tables are available on the Oracle Investor Relations website.

A replay of the conference call will also be available by dialing (855) 859-2056 or (404) 537-3406, Passcode: 9995836.

Mark Hurd, JC Aragone, Jamie Loeb, and Chris Evert at 2019 Oracle US Tennis Awards

Oracle CEO Mark Hurd, along with tennis Hall-of-Famer Chris Evert, announced today that tennis professionals Jamie Loeb and JC Aragone are the recipients of the third annual Oracle US Tennis Awards.

Loeb and Aragone each will receive a $100,000 grant to help develop their tennis careers. The two young professionals were selected by a six-member advisory council comprised of former tennis professionals and executives.  The Intercollegiate Tennis Association, the governing body of college tennis, will administer the grants.

Previous winners were Danielle Collins and Mackenzie McDonald in 2017, and Francesca Di Lorenzo and Chris Eubanks in 2018.

“JC and Jamie are talented young players with bright futures,’’ said Oracle’s Hurd. “We created these awards to help young players with college experience as they transition into professional tennis. We’re very proud of the success of our previous award winners, and hope that these grants help Jamie and JC in their continued development.’’

Loeb, 24, turned professional in 2015 after playing two years at the University of North Carolina, where she won the 2015 NCAA Division I Tennis Championships. She amassed an 84-9 singles record while at UNC. Loeb, a native of New York, has won seven ITF singles events and six doubles events since 2012. As a junior player, Loeb won the singles and doubles 18s championships at the 2012 USTA National Winter Championship. She currently has a UTR of 12.13 and is ranked No. 219 on the WTA tour.

“This means so much to me; I was in absolute shock when I heard,’’ Loeb said. “The success of past recipients proves how big of an impact an award like this can have. It’s great that Oracle recognizes the challenges we face. I’m am beyond excited to get to work!’’

Juan Cruz “JC” Aragone, 23, turned pro in 2017 after playing tennis at the University of Virginia.  A California native, Aragone was a member of three teams that won the NCAA Men’s Tennis Championships. His collegiate record was 109-22, and he was named to the NCAA All-Tournament team twice in singles and doubles. Aragone has won two ITF singles titles and one doubles title. He currently has a UTR of 14.69 and is No. 243 in the ATP rankings.

“This is such an honor,’’ Aragone said. “Having the right support and coaching makes a huge impact on a tennis player’s career. Oracle’s generosity will allow me to use that help to make it to the next level.’’

All four previous award winners have found professional success and improved their rankings since receiving the award. Collins, ranked No. 237 when she received the award, today is ranked No. 25. McDonald today is ranked No. 62, up from No. 257 in 2017.  Eubanks is No. 154, compared to 284 when he received the award a year ago. Francesca Di Lorenzo is up from No. 259 to No. 167.

Lindsay Davenport, on behalf of the advisory council, congratulated Loeb and Aragone and applauded Oracle for its continuing commitment to tennis.

“Jamie and JC are exciting players and the advisory council is confident these grants will help them reach their potential,’’ Davenport said. “We’re all grateful to Oracle for these awards and everything else it is doing to support American tennis.’’

The Oracle US Tennis Awards Advisory Council includes:

• Lindsay Davenport:  Former singles world No. 1; 1996 Olympic gold medalist,  current Tennis Channel analyst.
• Ilana Kloss: Former singles world No. 19; former CEO and Commissioner of World Team Tennis.
• Peggy Michel: three-time grand slam doubles champion; played college tennis at Arizona State; current Assistant Tournament Director & Vice President of Sales and Sponsorship, BNP Paribas Open.
• Dr. Timothy Russell: CEO ITA; college educator for three decades.
• Martin Blackman: General Manager, USTA Player Development; played college tennis at Stanford.
• Todd Martin: former singles world No. 4; CEO International Tennis Hall of Fame and Tournament Director, Dell Technologies Hall of Fame Open; played college tennis at Northwestern University.

Oracle is participating in a project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and facilitated by Internet2 to create innovative cloud computing capabilities for science applications and scientific computing research.

Internet2, a non-profit advanced technology community founded by colleges and universities, will manage two phases of the project. Known as Exploring Clouds for Acceleration of Science (E-CAS), the project will analyze cloud platforms to determine their strengths and capabilities for research and computational science across several academic disciplines.

Phase 1 will support six scientific and engineering applications and workflows with cloud computing capabilities. Then, two projects from the original six will be funded for a further year, measuring the scientific impact and results.

“Oracle is committed to ensuring that campus challenges are met, and the research and education communities are provided with the best technology to be successful,” said Jenny Tsai-Smith, vice president, Curriculum Development of Oracle. “Working with Internet2 and the National Science Foundation on E-CAS we are able to help these institutions gain access to the cutting-edge cloud computing technology they need to further ground-breaking discoveries through research.”

“The E-CAS project intends to accelerate scientific discovery through the integration and optimization of commercial cloud service advancements with cyberinfrastructure resources,” said Jamie Sunderland, executive director of service development at Internet2. “It also aims at identifying gaps between cloud provider capabilities and the potential for what they could provide to enhance academic research; and provide initial steps in documenting patterns and leading deployment practices to share with the community.”

Oracle partners with educators, researchers, students and university-affiliated entrepreneurship programs to create solutions that deliver significant positive impact to humanity and our world. Through the Oracle Cloud Innovation Accelerator program, Oracle grants cloud credits and provides technical support in support of those efforts. For example, one accelerator participant, The University of Bristol, is using cloud credits their cloud credits for various research projects in chemistry and life sciences.

“The University of Bristol is proud to be working so closely with Oracle to explore the prospects of doing things in a different way. It is undoubtedly the case that high capability computing is ever more central to the science endeavor,” said Professor Guy Orpen, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for the Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus at the University of Bristol. “Being able to access these capabilities in Oracle Cloud through the Oracle Cloud Innovation Accelerator program lowers barriers to entry so that more exploratory research, more groundbreaking and innovative research can be done.”

Oracle is in collaboration with the Internet2 NET+ program through an agreement with Mythics, providing services on a provisional basis to Internet2 member institutions at a discounted community pricing structure. As such, research institutions can leverage Oracle’s computing capabilities in conjunction with Mythics to access a dedicated network connecting universities with federal and state agencies.

As an Internet2 industry member, Oracle has been contributing to this collaborative environment and working with a large cross-section of the research and education community to ensure that the Oracle Cloud meets campus challenges and benefits all member institutions’ teaching, learning and research needs.

Oracle Data Cloud today announced that the Media Rating Council (MRC) has granted accreditation to Moat Analytics for its ability to detect and filter sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT), like the ad fraud generated by bot networks, in mobile apps. To earn its MRC accreditation, Moat Analytics successfully completed an audit of its technologies, systems, and processes by independent CPAs engaged by the MRC, and was found by an MRC committee to be compliant with MRC’s high standards.

“Mobile has become a critical front in the struggle against ad fraud,” said Dan Fichter, Vice President of Engineering at Oracle Data Cloud. “For marketing budgets to continue their shift to apps and the mobile web, marketers must gain confidence that the mobile environment is safe. This MRC accreditation was earned through the hard work of a cross-disciplinary Moat technology team that specializes in mobile development, network engineering, data science, and machine learning across a footprint that nets us tens of billions of measurement logs each day. I’m very proud of the teams that have pulled this off.”

Highlighting the importance of in-app SIVT prevention, Oracle last week announced the discovery of “DrainerBot,” a major mobile ad fraud operation distributed through millions of downloads of infected consumer Android apps. Infected apps could consume more than 10GB of data per month downloading hidden and unseen video ads, potentially costing each device owner a hundred dollars per year or more in data overage charges.

“The MRC’s guidelines for SIVT filtration and detection were designed to ensure that measurement providers comply with a comprehensive range of rigorous requirements for this vital and complicated work,” said George W. Ivie, Executive Director and CEO of MRC. “We are pleased to recognize Oracle Data Cloud’s Moat Analytics for achieving this important accreditation for in-app SIVT filtration and detection, and we commend them for their leadership in working toward transparency and accountability in digital advertising.”

According to the MRC definition, Sophisticated Invalid Traffic includes “traffic identified through advanced analytics; multi-point corroboration; human intervention – such as hijacked devices, ad tags, or creative; adware; malware; misappropriated content.” Moat Analytics previously has also been accredited by the MRC for SIVT Filtration and Detection for Desktop and Mobile Web, as well as Display and Video Ad Viewability Metrics for Desktop, Mobile Web, and Mobile In-App.

According to eMarketer, Americans spent more than three and a half hours per day using their smartphones and tablet devices on average in 2018, and 88 percent of that time was spent within apps, rather than mobile web browsers, creating a significant risk for ad fraud and a need for rigorous monitoring and defense.

Moat Analytics helps top advertisers and publishers measure and drive attention across trillions of ad impressions and content views, so they can avoid invalid traffic (IVT), improve viewability, and better protect their media spend.

While much of the discussion around 5G has centered on consumer devices, enterprises are looking towards the tremendous impact the technology can have on their ability to serve customers and the bottom line. Not only are most companies (97 percent) aware of the benefits of 5G, but 95 percent are already strategically planning how they will take advantage of this next generation of wireless connectivity to power core business initiatives from new services, to IoT and smart ecosystems.

The Oracle Communications study, “5G Smart Ecosystems Are Transforming the Enterprise – Are You Ready?,” surveyed 265 enterprise IT and business decision makers at medium and large enterprises globally in December, 2018 to find out how businesses are thinking about 5G today and its potential significance moving forward.

“Enterprises clearly want to capitalize on the promise of 5G, however, to be successful, IT and business leaders must avoid thinking of 5G as just another ‘G,’ and should instead consider it as an enabler to the smart ecosystem we have long talked about,” said Doug Suriano, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Communications. “This means asking the right questions at the outset, and considering how 5G can help enable upcoming solutions, what timeframe should be considered and how will they will procure and use 5G capabilities as part of their business evolution.”

Born in the cloud, 5G will have the ability to enable enterprises to provision or “slice” core pieces of their networks to power mission-critical new offerings and smart ecosystems. This can range from anything to providing the highest speed connections for life-saving 911 services, to enabling autonomous vehicles to communicate with each other quickly; to ensuring IoT devices in smart factories are providing real-time information on the health of machines and assets.

Outside specific initiatives, respondents believe 5G will have a wide-spread impact across their business, including increasing employee productivity (86 percent), reducing costs (84 percent), enhancing customer experience (83 percent), and improving agility (83 percent). Business decision makers are most focused on quality of experience the technology will bring, while IT is concerned with network speed and resiliency.

Unleashing the Promise of 5G Ecosystems in the Enterprise

When it comes to 5G, enterprise are most focused on:

• Unlocking the potential of IoT: Beyond initial benefits such as speed and quality of experience, 84 percent of respondents feel that 5G networks will be transformative and have a lasting impact on the way their companies do business. Another 73 percent agree the IoT will be revolutionized by 5G networks and 68 percent feel it will be transformative to their customers.
• Monetizing new services: Eighty-percent expect 5G to generate new revenue streams for their business. Forty-one percent of the respondents would deploy new monetization solutions specifically for 5G services alongside existing systems, while thirty-four percent say they would replace their existing systems with a single, converged solution for all services. Just about one in five (22 percent) said they will utilize and extend existing monetization solutions with 5G.
• Experience and efficiencies: Eighty-four percent of respondents agree that 5G networks will be transformative and have a lasting impact on the way their companies do business. While business respondents are focused on the quality of experience improvements made possible by 5G, IT respondents care more about the network technologies and the internal efficiencies 5G may enable.
• Security: While excited about the potential of 5G, both business and IT respondents cited security as a top priority. 51% of respondents ranked security as their highest concern.

Oracle’s survey also explored 5G’s potential role in solutions as varied as live streaming, industrial automation, smart homes and buildings, connected vehicles, immersive gaming, augmented and virtual reality. To learn more, click here to access the report or infographic.

Companies continue to move business critical workloads and their most sensitive data to the cloud, yet security challenges remain, according to the second annual Oracle and KPMG Cloud Threat Report 2019 released today. The report found that 72 percent of respondents feel the public cloud is more secure than what they can deliver in their own data center and are moving data to the cloud, but visibility gaps remain that can make it hard for businesses to understand where and how their critical data is handled in the cloud.

The survey also found a projected 3.5 times increase in the number of organizations with more than half of their data in the cloud from 2018 to 2020, and 71 percent of organizations indicated that a majority of this cloud data is sensitive, up from 50 percent last year. However, the vast majority (92 percent) noted they are concerned about employees following cloud policies designed to protect this data.

The report found that the mission-critical nature of cloud services has made cloud security a strategic imperative. Cloud services are no longer nice-to-have tertiary elements of IT—they serve core functions essential to all aspects of business operations. The 2019 report identified several key areas where the use of cloud service can present security challenges for many organizations.

• Confusion about the shared responsibility security model has resulted in cybersecurity incidents. Eighty-two percent of cloud users have experienced security events due to confusion over the shared responsibility model. While 91 percent have formal methodologies for cloud usage, 71 percent are confident these policies are being violated by employees, leading to instances of malware and data compromise.
• CISOs are too often on the cloud security sidelines. Ninety percent of CISOs surveyed are confused about their role in securing a Software as a Service (SaaS) versus the cloud service provider environment.
• Visibility remains the top security challenge. The top security challenge identified in the survey is detecting and reacting to security incidents in the cloud, with 38 percent of respondents naming it as their top challenge today. Thirty percent cited the inability of existing network security controls to provide visibility into cloud-resident server workloads as a security challenge.
• Rogue cloud application use and lack of security controls put data at risk. Ninety-three percent of respondents indicated they are still dealing with “shadow IT”—in which employees use unsanctioned personal devices and storage or file share software for corporate data. Half of organizations cited lack of security controls and misconfigurations as common reasons for fraud and data exposures. Twenty-six percent of organizations cited unauthorized use of cloud services as their biggest cybersecurity challenge today.

“The world’s most important workloads are moving to the cloud, heightening the need for a coordinated, integrated and layered security strategy,” said Kyle York, vice president of product strategy, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. “Starting with a cloud platform built for security and applying AI to safeguard data while also removing the burden of administrative tasks and patching removes complexity and helps organizations safeguard their most critical asset—their data.”

“As organizations continue to transition their cyber security thinking from strictly risk management to more of a focus on business innovation and growth, it is important that enterprise leaders align their business and cyber security strategies,” said Tony Buffomante, U.S. Leader of KPMG LLP’s Cyber Security Services. “With cloud services becoming an integral part of business operations, there is an intensified need to improve the security of the cloud and to integrate cloud security into the organization’s broader strategic risk mitigation plans.”

Additional Key Findings

• Automation may improve chronic patching problems: Fifty-one percent surveyed report patching has delayed IT projects and 89 percent of organizations want to employ an automatic patching strategy.
• Machine learning may help decrease threats: Fifty-three percent are using machine learning to decrease overall cyber security threats, while 48 percent are using a Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) solution to automatically trigger a second factor of authentication upon detecting anomalous user behavior.
• Supply chain risk: Business-critical services must be contained as supply chain compromise has led to the introduction of malware in 49 percent of cases, followed by unauthorized access of data in 46 percent of cases.
• Security events continue to increase while shared responsibility confusion expands: Only 1 in 10 organizations can analyze more than 75 percent of their security event data and 82 percent of cloud users have experienced security events due to confusion over cloud shared responsibility models.
• Cloud adoption has expanded the core-to-edge threat model: An increasingly mobile workforce accessing both on premise and cloud-delivered applications and data dramatically complicates how cybersecurity professionals must think about their risk and exposure. In 2018, the number one area of investment was training, but this year, training slipped to number two and was replaced by edge-based security controls (e.g., WAF, CASB, Botnet/DDoS Mitigation controls).

To find out more about the Oracle and KPMG Cloud Threat Report 2019, visit Oracle at the RSA Conference, March 4-8 in San Francisco. (Booth #1559 – Moscone South).

About the Report

The Oracle and KPMG Cloud Threat Report 2019 examines emerging cyber security challenges and risks that businesses are facing as they embrace cloud services at an accelerating pace. The report provides leaders around the globe and across industries with important insights and recommendations for how they can help ensure that cyber security is a critical business enabler. The data in the report is based on a survey of 450 cyber security and IT professionals from private and public-sector organizations in North America (United States and Canada), Western Europe (United Kingdom), and Asia (Australia, Singapore).

Oracle today announced the discovery of and mitigation steps for “DrainerBot,” a major mobile ad fraud operation distributed through millions of downloads of infected consumer apps. Infected apps can consume more than 10GB of data per month downloading hidden and unseen video ads, potentially costing each device owner a hundred dollars per year or more in data overage charges.

DrainerBot was uncovered through the joint efforts of Oracle technology teams from its Moat and Dyn acquisitions. Now part of the Oracle Data Cloud, Moat offers viewability, invalid traffic (IVT), and brand safety solutions, while Dyn enables DNS and security capabilities as part of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

The DrainerBot code appears to have been distributed via an infected SDK integrated into hundreds of popular consumer Android apps and games[1] like "Perfect365," "VertexClub," “Draw Clash of Clans,” “Touch ‘n’ Beat – Cinema,” and “Solitaire: 4 Seasons (Full).” Apps with active DrainerBot infections appear to have been downloaded by consumers more than 10 million times, according to public download counts.

Information About DrainerBot

• DrainerBot is an app-based fraud operation that uses infected code on Android devices to deliver fraudulent, invisible video ads to the device.
• The infected app reports back to the ad network that each video advertisement has appeared on a legitimate publisher site, but the sites are spoofed, not real.
• The fraudulent video ads do not appear onscreen in the apps (which generally lack web browsers or video players) and are never seen by users.
• Infected apps consume significant bandwidth and battery, with tests and public reports indicating an app can consume more than 10 GB/month of data or quickly drain a charged battery, even if the infected app is not in use or in sleep mode.
• The SDK being used in the affected apps appears to have been distributed by Tapcore, a company in the Netherlands.
• Tapcore claims to help software developers monetize stolen or pirated installs of their apps by delivering ads through unauthorized installs, although fraudulent ad activity also takes place after valid app installs.
• On its website, Tapcore claims to be serving more than 150 million ad requests daily and says its SDK has been incorporated into more than 3,000 apps.

Supporting Quotes

“Mobile app fraud is a fast-growing threat that touches every stakeholder in the supply chain, from advertisers and their agencies to app developers, ad networks, publishers, and, increasingly, consumers themselves,” said Mike Zaneis, CEO of the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG). “These types of fraud operations cross all four of TAG’s programmatic pillars, including fraud, piracy, malware, and transparency, and preventing such operations will require unprecedented cross-industry collaboration. As the ad industry’s leading information-sharing body, we are delighted to work with Oracle to educate and inform TAG’s membership about this emerging threat.”

“DrainerBot is one of the first major ad fraud operations to cause clear and direct financial harm to consumers,” said Eric Roza, SVP and GM of Oracle Data Cloud. “DrainerBot-infected apps can cost users hundreds of dollars in unnecessary data charges while wasting their batteries and slowing their devices. We look forward to working with companies across the digital advertising ecosystem to identify, expose, and prevent this and other emerging types of ad fraud.”

“Mobile devices are a prime target with a number of potential infection vectors, which are growing increasingly complicated, interconnected, and global in nature,” said Kyle York, VP of product strategy, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. “The discovery of the DrainerBot operation highlights the benefit of taking a multi-pronged approach to identifying digital ad fraud by combining multiple cloud technologies. Bottom line is both individuals and organizations need to pay close attention to what applications are running on their devices and who wrote them."

Resources

Detailed information and mitigation resources for DrainerBot can be found at info.moat.com/drainerbot, including:

• Information and advice for consumers on identifying potentially-infected apps on their devices, as well as general device security tips;
• Access to a list of app IDs that have shown DrainerBot activity; (Note: Not all apps listed may currently be infected)
• Access to the DrainerBot SDK, as well as related documentation;
• Access to sample infected APKs for use by antivirus and security providers to identify and mitigate the DrainerBot threat.

Oracle Data Cloud’s Moat Analytics helps top advertisers and publishers measure and drive attention across trillions of ad impressions and content views, so they can avoid invalid traffic (IVT), improve viewability, and better protect their media spend. Among those solutions, Pre-Bid by Moat helps marketers identify and utilize ad inventory that meets their high standards for IVT, third-party viewability, and brand safety.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure edge services (formerly Dyn) offer managed Web Application Security, DNS, and Internet Intelligence services that help companies build and operate a secure, intelligent cloud edge, protecting them from a complex and evolving cyberthreat landscape.

[1] All of the apps identified have recently generated fraudulent DrainerBot impressions identified by Moat Analytics.

Household energy consumers around the globe supported by Oracle Utilities Opower Energy Efficiency programs have reached nearly 23-terawatt hours (TWh) in cumulative energy savings. This equates to enough energy to take every household in Osaka off the grid for a year or to charge every personal mobile phone in Japan for 74 years.

The digital revolution has enabled consumers to better control everything from how they shop to how they ride to work. Until relatively recently, however, they lacked the ability to effectively manage their energy usage to lessen both their environmental footprint and monthly energy bills. Opower first introduced its consumer energy efficiency programs to the market in 2008 —including the world’s first behaviorally-informed Home Energy Reports (HERs). These reports use a mix of data analytics and behavioral science to not only help utility customers to understand their energy usage better, but also to empower them to take steps to reduce waste where it makes sense for them to do so. Just ten years later, the 23 TWh savings milestone is a testament to how utilities and their customers have embraced these programs and transformed  behaviors to significantly reduce energy waste and associated carbon emissions.

“Together, with our partners and utility customers, including the Ministry of Environment in Japan, we have given 15 million households around the world access to actionable data that is enabling them to take charge of their energy consumption,” said Scott Neuman, Oracle Utilities’ group vice president for Opower. “With 23 TWh of cumulative savings and counting, we have only scratched the surface of what’s possible. It is inspiring to imagine the impact these programs will continue to have in creating a more sustainable energy future, and helping countries such as Japan to reach their projected carbon reduction goals – one household at a time.”

Opower is part of Oracle Utilities, which provides the most complete, modern and integrated platform for the entire utility value chain, from meter to grid to end-customers.

Japanese Households Help Reach Country’s 2030 CO₂ Emission Reduction Goal

Oracle was commissioned in 2017 by Japan’s Ministry of Environment to work with four major utilities across Japan, using the Oracle Utilities Opower Energy Efficiency Cloud Service to send  Home Energy Reports (HERs) containing personalized energy usage information and efficiency advice to 60,000 households in each of the five utility territories (a total of 300,000 households) four times during the year.

In April of 2018, the Ministry of Environment reported that households receiving HERs used an average of two percent less energy relative to those not receiving these communications. While this may sound small on the surface, MOE estimated that if all Japanese households saved just two percent throughout the year, this would be the equivalent of replacing 26 million refrigerators (at a cost of roughly 3 trillion JPY), or placing rooftop solar panels on 800,000 homes (at a cost of 1.4 trillion JPY).   

The Opower energy efficiency programs, including Home Energy Reports, are part of a larger Oracle Utilities demand-side management product suite that includes Peak Management, Proactive Alerts, and energy management web tools. Working in tandem, these solutions are designed to inform and motivate consumers to better control their home energy consumption and cost, while allowing utilities to proactively meet regulatory requirements, decrease the cost to serve, reduce call center volume, and improve customer satisfaction. Opower recently expanded their offering to better engage customers as they move towards more distributed energy resources (DERs), including solar, electric vehicles, etc. Learn more here.

Opower is fueled by the world’s largest residential energy data analytics platform with over 1.6 trillion meter reads from more than 60 million households and businesses, and has been deployed across more than 100 utilities.

Delays in institutional review board (IRB) approvals often complicate clinical research and development and delay the introduction of new therapies to market. Such bottlenecks pose additional obstacles in an industry plagued by rising development costs and increasing complexities. Out-of-the-box integration between Quorum and Oracle Health Sciences goBalto Activate cloud service addresses the inefficiencies associated with submission errors and lengthy IRB submission review cycles.

Research indicates that principal investigators spend nearly half (42 percent) of their time dealing with “administrative burdens.”  This is a category in which IRB-related issues weigh heavily, with one third of that lost time emanating from researcher omissions and errors. IRB review takes up to 2.9 percent of the total time devoted to a study and represents up to 4.7 percent of study costs.

With the integration, country-specific workflows and a management-based approach to site activation in goBalto Activate creates seamless communication with Quorum. This eliminates the need to send IRB submission documents via traditional, error-prone, manual forms of communication. The integrated connection enables Quorum to push approval documents directly into Activate workflows, automatically triggering alerts and thereby saving significant time. Study teams benefit from point-and-click submission of packages, seamless data transfers and the confidence that their submission was completed.

“Quorum is proud to collaborate with Oracle Health Sciences on this critical industry need,” said Cami Gearhart, CEO of Quorum. “This collaboration aligns with our customer promise of providing exceptional service through One-Touch Collaboration™, by continuing to be a partner of choice for agile and innovative ethics review services while maintaining the highest quality of human subject protections.”

“Quorum joins other leading organizations that are committed to modernizing and rethinking how clinical trials are initiated,” said Steve Rosenberg, general manager, Oracle Health Sciences. “Automation has become critical for reducing the costs and complexities of clinical trials and this new level of integration eliminates time consuming processes and improves operational efficiencies by addressing an entrenched bottleneck in the initiation process.”

By enabling global anytime, anywhere access to purpose-built study startup technology Oracle Health Sciences brings measurable change to the inception of a trial. The adoption of this solution will help shorten cycle times, reduce study costs and, most importantly, speed the delivery of new therapies to patients.

KT Corp has selected Oracle Communications for the 5G Policy Control Function (PCF) in the buildout of its 5G network and to enable new Network as a Service (NaaS) offerings for businesses. An early adopter of 5G, KT Corp is known for innovation and selected Oracle for its overall 5G readiness, product maturity and competitive strengths, including its agile and feature-rich 5G PCF solution.

“Building on our longstanding relationship with Oracle Communications, we are pleased to continue working together as we take advantage of all that 5G has to offer,” said Gwangwook Lee, VP Core Network Strategy & Planning Department., KT Corp. “In trials, the Oracle 5G PCF solution performed beyond expectations and met our discerning metrics for driving the success of our upcoming 5G deployment. After six years of successful partnership with Oracle in the 4G realm, we look forward to continuing the partnership with Oracle in the 5G domain and as we move to deliver new, innovative offerings to our customers.”

The 5G PCF is the policy management function of the 5G Control Plane, and one of the 5G Core Network elements delivering Quality of Service and other network policies to communications service providers’ (CSPs) networks. Leveraging Oracle’s 5G Core Network, KT Corp will be able to continue its network transformation toward 5G, and will unlock new doors for differentiated and personalized customer offerings, supporting incremental 5G network monetization with improved service agility, increased bandwidth and more customized services.

With the introduction of 5G, CSPs like KT Corp are able to launch and evolve custom-fit network slices faster than ever. Network slicing is a highly dynamic process that provides CSPs with the opportunity to tailor connectivity services to the precise requirements of any given application; user, device or context, by logically isolating virtualized network resources. This capability will enable CSPs to launch NaaS solutions tailored to the specific needs of their enterprise customers that can range from AR and VR to Connected Cars, Smart Factories, and Smart Cities.

“By delivering a solution that addresses 5G policy requirements and underpins KT Corp’s leading 5G transformation,” said Andy Hicks, Principal Analyst at GlobalData, “Oracle is staking a claim to leadership in the 5G core.”

“As we extend our partnership with visionary, KT Corp beyond our collective 4G success, Oracle is unlocking doors to new innovations in this next generation of connectivity spanning from enterprise applications to smart ecosystems,” said Doug Suriano, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Communications.

Businesses around the world have already reaped the benefits of blockchain applications built on Oracle Blockchain Platform. Companies using Oracle’s business-ready blockchain have been able to move from experimentation to production by creating new blockchain applications from scratch or adding blockchain functionality to an existing solution. To support its customers, Oracle has added new features to the platform that help users speed up the development, integration, and deployment of new blockchain applications.

While blockchain can greatly streamline many existing processes surrounding supply chain, identity, cross-border payments, and fraud detection, businesses have struggled to implement blockchain networks within their existing ecosystems. Oracle Blockchain Platform addresses this challenge by streamlining the process of building and integrating blockchain applications across diverse business networks and connecting them into the relevant business processes within these ecosystems.

“Oracle’s continued leadership and investment in enterprise blockchain technology ensures that the platform has all of the critical capabilities organizations need to build blockchain applications to handle their most important business transactions,” said Frank Xiong, group vice president, Blockchain Product Development, Oracle. “The number of customers already running blockchain applications based on Oracle’s blockchain platform is testament to the strength of the technology and the value it brings to a broad range of industries.”

Worldwide Customers with Blockchain Apps in Use

Using blockchain applications, Oracle customers are establishing new ways to increase trust in diverse ecosystems and increasing the speed, security and efficiency of a wide range of business processes. Oracle’s rapidly growing list of global customers with production deployments on its enterprise-grade blockchain platform include:

• China Distance Education Holdings Limited (CDEL) uses blockchain to share educational records and professional certifications across many educational institutions to help employers and recruiters verify the educational credentials claimed by individuals.
• Circulor uses blockchain to track conflict minerals from their origin at the mines to processing and use in electronic components to ensure ethical sourcing of raw materials.
• SERES uses blockchain to bring greater trust and efficiency to electronic invoicing in franchise networks, which share ordering and fulfillment data between franchisors and franchisees.
• Additionally, Arab Jordan Investment Bank, CargoSmart, Certified Origins, HealthSync, ICS Financial Systems, NeuroSoft, Nigeria Customs, OriginTrail, SDK.Finance, and TradeFin have built or integrated production-ready blockchain applications on Oracle Blockchain Platform.

“Oracle’s blockchain solution delivers enterprise performance, security and scalability right out-of-the-box,” said Doug Johnson-Poensgen, CEO and founder of Circulor. “We started with the Oracle Blockchain Platform four months ago and were able to go from zero to a production system spanning multiple organizations involved in ethical sourcing of minerals within a matter of months. Another key advantage is that we were able to integrate Oracle’s blockchain platform into a hybrid blockchain network spanning multiple clouds and easily integrate with our existing systems and applications.”

“Blockchain improves the trust relationship between franchisor and the franchises by including best practices and decentralized access to the transactions.  Normally, merchandise acceptance processes are manual and require an operator entering the data into the system. But, for example when a franchise has economic problems, it can repudiate that delivery, saying that it never received the merchandise. They can manipulate the database and, on the other hand, also the franchisor can manipulate it,” said José María Mínguez Gutiérrez, Transactional Services Manager of SERES. “With blockchain and its immutability and traceability of information, all these problems disappear and all parties can trust the data and the transactions.”

Enhances Security, Developer Productivity and DevOps Capabilities

With this latest release, Oracle has added unique developer-oriented productivity enhancements and consortium-oriented identity management features, which are critical to diverse organizations conducting business transactions via a blockchain network. New DevOps capabilities make the platform easier to integrate with existing business and IT systems. Additionally, as blockchain becomes an important data store in the enterprise, the platform enables Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse customers to transparently capture blockchain transaction history and current state data for analytics and to integrate it with other data sources. New features include:

• Enhanced world state database to support standard SQL-based ledger queries reducing the complexity of developing chaincode using readily available programming skills, ensure smart contracts can safely rely on the query results, which are verified at transaction commit, and significantly boost performance of rich data queries.
• Rich history database shadows transaction history into a relational database schema in the Autonomous Data Warehouse or other Oracle databases, which transparently enables analytics integration for interactive dashboards and reports.
• Enhanced REST APIs for event subscription, blockchain administration/configuration, and monitoring of network health, transaction rates, and other statistics, which simplify integration with existing enterprise IT tools.
• Identity federation further extends authentication capabilities to work with external identity providers to facilitate consortium blockchains with many diverse participants using their existing identity management systems.
• Third-party certificate support for registering client organizations on the blockchain network to enable them to use existing certificates issued by trusted third parties.
• Hyperledger Fabric 1.3 support, which adds many new features based on the evolving open source version, including chaincode development in Java, further leveraging existing enterprise skills, and support for private transactions among a subset of members, preserving privacy and business confidentiality. This demonstrates Oracle’s commitment to stay current with the Hyperledger community by leveraging new releases and contributing to the open source community.

About Oracle Blockchain

Only Oracle provides a comprehensive blockchain offering, including business-ready Oracle Blockchain Applications Cloud and Oracle Blockchain Platform for developers who need to build or integrate their applications. Oracle’s blockchain applications are built with Oracle Blockchain Platform and seamlessly connect with Oracle Supply Chain Management (SCM) Cloud, Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Cloud and other Oracle Cloud Applications. Oracle Blockchain Platform is production ready with enterprise-grade capabilities, easy to adopt, and quick to develop upon, accelerating customer’s blockchain journeys and saving their costs.

SDK.finance is using Oracle Blockchain Platform to help the company transform the rapidly evolving payments industry. By integrating Oracle Blockchain Platform into its core payment platform for banks and financial institutions, SDK.finance provides a secure payment system that removes the need for intermediaries, such as correspondent banks and clearing houses. This helps facilitate faster, more cost effective and secure payments, and as a result, can improve the overall customer experience.

Pavlo Sidelov, Chief Technical Officer, SDK.finance said, “Despite the considerable disruption of the financial services industry, cross-border payments are still very slow, the associated fees are expensive, and there is an inherent lack of trust, especially around peer-to-peer payments. We are removing these pain points by providing a platform that drives highly secure, affordable, and fast transactions. Oracle’s enterprise-grade blockchain cloud platform is critical to helping us achieve these goals.”

Using Oracle’s reliable and high performing distributed ledger technology, SDK.finance provides its customers with trusted real-time verification of transactions. Replacing intermediary financial institutions with the new system means that transactions only need to be confirmed through the blockchain, which has the potential to reduce the time needed for cross-border transactions from days or even weeks to a matter of seconds. It also removes the associated transaction fees, benefitting both end users and merchants, as they gain an alternative way to accept payments without the heavy fees charged by banks and payment processing companies on transactions and chargebacks. This allows them to provide better value and improve the experience for their customers.

Frank Xiong, group vice president, Blockchain Development Platform, Oracle said, “Blockchain has the power to impact all industries, including financial services and organizations like SDK.finance. Using Oracle Blockchain Platform, SDK.finance can change the future of digital payment processing, improving the user experience, security, speed, and cost of each payment dramatically.”

Oracle provides a comprehensive blockchain offering, including business-ready Oracle Blockchain Applications Cloud and a pre-assembled Oracle Blockchain Platform for developers building or integrating their own applications. Oracle Blockchain Platform is production-ready with enterprise-grade capabilities, easy to adopt, and quick to develop upon, helping to save customers’ time and costs and accelerating their blockchain journeys.

Blockchain technology can reduce the security issues in mobile payments and online purchases. The inherent trust factor related with blockchain is most important when dealing with peer-to-peer payments. With blockchain technology, the digitally signed transaction requests, results verification via smart contracts and multi-party consensus helps to protect the users’ digital transactions. Blockchain technology has the potential to solve security concerns by providing a permissioned platform that ensures full transparency between transacting parties.

To support growing customer demand in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Oracle NetSuite has expanded its partner ecosystem in the region and introduced new innovations to help organizations gain the visibility and control needed to navigate change and accelerate growth. The new partnerships and innovations are designed to help UAE organizations drive growth, reduce costs and quickly and easily achieve the benefits of cloud computing.

“The UAE is putting a huge focus on business growth and economic development and this is creating a unique opportunity for innovation,” said Nicky Tozer, VP of EMEA, Oracle NetSuite. “With our new innovations and expanded partner ecosystem, we are strongly placed to help UAE customers capitalize on this opportunity.”

Growing Customer Base

NetSuite is helping UAE organizations and international subsidiaries operating in-region gain the visibility and control needed to navigate change and accelerate growth.

Dubai-based smartphone manufacturer Condor Middle East has reduced the time spent on business processes by 75 percent since adopting NetSuite. “We wanted to increase visibility into our operations and improve the outputs we get from our system. With NetSuite, we’ve streamlined operations and now have a unified and flexible business platform that can support our objectives,” said Ayman Samy, General Manager, Condor Middle East.

UAE healthy snack company Munchbox credits NetSuite with enabling it to meet its triple digit growth goals. “We found NetSuite best suited to our needs—minimal upfront investment, positive testimonials from customers and passionate customer care from the team,” said Mahmoud Adham, CEO, Munchbox.

UAE-based retail distributor Denaster General Trading LLC, which helps international brands reach consumers across the Middle East, selected NetSuite to support its international expansion into India and the UK. “To support our international expansion, we need a flexible business platform that can give us a real-time view into our business. NetSuite meets this need and its proven track record of helping companies like ours scale internationally will be a huge advantage,” said Deep Bhogal, Managing Director, Denaster General Trading LLC.

New SuiteSuccess Industry Cloud Solution

The latest innovations within the NetSuite platform include new SuiteSuccess Financials First capabilities that help organizations operating in the UAE automate financial processes, improve reporting and gain real-time visibility into key business metrics. Built on industry-leading practices and deep domain knowledge, SuiteSuccess includes pre-defined roles, KPIs, dashboards and workflows for finance departments.

The functionality allows for VAT support, enabling organizations to comply with tax rules from the Unified Value Added Tax (VAT) agreement signed by Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The highly flexible tax engine supports over 110 countries for VAT—including rules and reporting—creating a solid foundation for GCC VAT functionality.

Bolstered Partner Ecosystem

To meet growing customer demand for cloud business management solutions in the UAE, NetSuite has expanded the NetSuite Alliance Partner Program with the addition of seven new partners to help customers across industries adapt to change and achieve faster time to value.

“We’ve partnered with NetSuite on over 400 implementations. We view NetSuite as the number one cloud ERP company in the UAE as it enables organizations of all sizes to adapt to this fast-changing market,” said Amit Prabhu, General Manager of Aarialife Technologies.

“We’re delighted to join forces with NetSuite. This investment will allow us to apply our advanced ERP implementation capabilities to NetSuite’s world-leading business management software skills so we can support customers across the region to achieve greater efficiency in their organization,” Farhan Al Bastaki, CEO, Sharaf HQ Investment.

TaylorMade Golf, in its quest for growth after divesting from Adidas, is turning to Oracle Autonomous Database to underpin its cloud modernization strategy and drive innovation. A key benefit of the new Oracle Database is that it automates the day-to-day database operations and tuning, freeing TaylorMade to focus on making the world’s best golf equipment.

When TaylorMade separated from Adidas, the company needed to build out a platform in the cloud and chose Oracle Autonomous Database for its unprecedented availability, performance, and security. The industry’s first and only autonomous database, Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse provides TaylorMade with the ability to scale as needed for planned business initiatives, particularly around seasonal workloads, in a simple and cost-effective manner. It also works with TaylorMade’s existing business analytic tools to drive faster analysis to rapidly adjust sales strategies as needed. The database also gives TaylorMade the tools they need to pinpoint opportunities for business diversification.

“As our business needs continued to evolve, we required a more efficient way to seamlessly manage and scale our data management system,” said Tom Collard, vice president of IT, TaylorMade. “With Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse, we now have a scalable, low-cost cloud platform to power our business. This will help sustain growth and free up valuable employee time so they can focus on more mission-critical initiatives.”

Taking advantage of Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse’s self-driving, self-securing, and self-repairing capabilities, TaylorMade will ensure its critical infrastructure is running efficiently with performance that is 40x faster than its previous on-premise database solution. This will enable its IT staff to focus on activities that drive growth and better meet customer demands while keeping costs low.

“TaylorMade has a tradition of building the best golf equipment for professionals and consumers,” said Andrew Mendelsohn, executive vice president of Database Server Technologies, Oracle. “With Oracle Autonomous Database, Oracle handles all the database operations and tuning so TaylorMade’s IT staff can devote more time to deriving business value from their data.”

Energy distribution is no longer a linear equation. As new energy and data sources continue to grow, utilities must take a more holistic approach to better understand and manage resources and engage increasingly active customers at the edge of the grid. The expanded Oracle Utilities Network Management System (NMS) addresses this market need with a new Distributed Energy Resource Management (DERM) module that enables utilities to monitor situations in real-time and proactively optimize their broader network in concert with this explosion of emerging energy resources, including solar, wind, electric vehicles and more.

By eliminating data and application silos and giving operators real-time visibility and control across all grid and pipeline assets in a single platform, operators can leverage the most comprehensive, real-time model to ensure a more resilient and efficient grid. For example, applying built-in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to a growing library of data, including Advanced Metering infrastructure (AMI), weather forecasts, SCADA and IoT device interaction, NMS enables grid operators to reliably predict future storms and alter supply and demand. Coupled with enhanced mobile tools, field crews can quickly garner the insights they need to limit the impact of outages for customers and speed restoration efforts.

“Utilities today are facing a perfect storm of evolving distributed energy resources across their networks, a barrage of data, and ever-savvy customers who are looking to their utility to be a trusted advisor in this changing energy journey,” said Dan Byrnes, SVP of product development, Oracle Utilities. “As such, resources can no longer be managed in isolation. With the latest innovations in NMS, utilities can improve long-term business planning around infrastructure investments and maintenance schedules, launch new revenue-generating customer-focused energy services, and proactively optimize operational performance.”

End-to-End Visibility and Control Across Resources

With the new enhancements to Oracle Utilities Network Management System, utilities reap the benefits of:

• Automated Grid Optimization: Offers complete visibility and control from distribution to the connected customer including distributed energy resource management, D-SCADA functionality, and IoT device interactions. This allows utilities to balance supply and demand all in one place, in both real-time and continuously looking ahead to proactively mitigate grid constraints before they happen.
• Deep Insights for Automated Decision Making: By ingesting data from a variety of sources and harnessing the power of AI and analytics, utilities can understand past weather patterns and predict future outages for automated decision making.
• Extended Field Crew Access: Leveraging existing mobile device capabilities, field crews can now pull up outage maps, trend data and performance analysis, even in offline mode for faster, more efficient outage resolution.
• Improved User Experience: Intuitive order-based workflows, simplified tab-based windows, and the ability to have multiple events open simultaneously deliver an enriched user experience with no compromise to safety, reliability and performance.

Oracle Utilities NMS combines market-leading outage management technology with distribution management and advanced analytics to empower utilities to maximize grid operation capabilities, shorten outage duration and optimize distribution, all while keeping their customers engaged and informed. To learn more, see the new Oracle NMS system in action today at DistribuTECH booth #10315 or visit here.

Retailers can now improve inventory management through a single view of demand throughout their entire product lifecycle with the next generation Oracle Retail Demand Forecasting (RDF) Cloud Service. With built-in machine learning, artificial intelligence and decision science, the offering enables retailers to gain pervasive value across retail processes, allowing for optimal planning strategies, decreased operational costs, and enhanced customer satisfaction. In addition, modern, intuitive dashboards improve operational agility and workflows, adapting immediately to new information to improve inventory outcomes.

The offering is part of the Oracle’s Platform for Modern Retail, all built on the cloud-native platform and aligned to the Oracle Retail Planning and Optimization portfolio. Learn more about Oracle Retail Demand Forecasting Cloud Service here.

“As customer trends continue to evolve faster than ever before, it’s imperative that retailers move quickly to optimize inventory and demand. Too little inventory and customers are dissatisfied. Too much and retailers have a bottom line problem that leads to unprofitable discounting,” said Jeff Warren, vice president, Oracle Retail. “We have distilled over 15 years of forecasting experience across hundreds of retailers worldwide into a comprehensive and modern solution that maximizes the forecast accuracy for the entire product lifecycle. Our customers asked, and we delivered.”

For example, the offering was evaluated against the data of a major specialty retailer following the 2017 holiday season. The scenario ran 2.2M units sold, representing over $480M in revenue. With the forecast accuracy improvements, the retailer could have achieved the same sales with at least 345K units less of inventory. In tandem, the retailer could have improved 70 percent of promotional forecasts using completely automated next-generation forecasting data science—all while delivering the same level of service to customers.

“As unified commerce sales grow, the ability to support all four business activities (demand planning, supply planning, inventory planning, and sales and operations execution/merchandising, inventory and operations execution) across all sales channels becomes even more important. A 2017 Gartner survey of supply chain executives highlighted the importance organizations place on their planning capabilities.” Of the “top three investment areas from 2016 through 2017, 36% of retail respondents cited upgrading their demand management capabilities,” wrote Gartner experts Mike Griswold and Alex Pradhan. Source:  Gartner Market Guide for Retail Forecasting and Replenishment Solutions, December 31, 2018

Maximizing Forecast Accuracy Throughout the Product Lifecycle

With the next generation Oracle Retail Demand Forecasting Cloud Service, retailers can:

• Tailor approaches for short and long lifecycle products, maximizing forecast accuracy for the entire product lifecycle
• Adapt to recent trends, seasonality, out-of-stocks, and promotions; and reflect retailers’ unique demand drivers, delivering better customer experience from engagement to sale, to fulfillment
• Leverage dashboard views to support day-in-the-life forecasting workflows such as forecast overview, forecast scorecard, exceptions and forecast approvals
• Gain transparency across the entire supply chain that enables analytical processes and end-users to understand and engage with the forecast, increasing inventory productivity
• Coordinate and simulate demand-driven outcomes using forecasts that adapt immediately to new information and without a dependency on batch processes, driving operational agility

A short-term mindset and entrenched cultural habits are the biggest barriers to collaboration between HR and finance teams according to a new study from Oracle. The study of 1,510 HR, finance and business professionals found that in order to successfully unlock the value from data and help their organizations adapt to the changing nature of the global talent market, HR teams need to rethink analytics technology, skills and processes to improve collaboration with finance and drive a competitive advantage.

“HR and finance departments bring different, yet complementary skills to the table. While they traditionally have not worked together closely, that needs to change in order for organizations to create a competitive advantage in today’s evolving market and talent economy,” said Donald Anderson, Director, Organization & Talent Development, Oracle. “The first step to overcoming traditional barriers and bringing HR and finance teams together is having a collaborative mindset with the right skillsets to both gather and analyze data so that it can be used to make impactful business decisions. That alone will deliver significant benefits to an organization’s performance.”

Having Data is Not the Same as Being Able to Use it Effectively

The global talent market is more competitive than ever with the rise of new technologies, climbing costs of recruitment and increasing demand for new skills. To be successful in this rapidly changing market, HR teams need to rethink their approach to analytics, skills and collaboration to drive a competitive advantage.

• 95 percent of HR and finance professionals plan to make data-driven collaboration a priority in 2019
• To act on data in a meaningful way, HR and finance teams will need to acquire new skills. The survey found that 49 percent cannot currently use analytics to forecast outcomes and 81 percent are unable to determine future actions based on predictive data.

It’s Not About More Technology, it’s About You

While data and analytics have proliferated HR and finance, the benefits are limited without effective collaboration and the ability to derive value. In order to reap the rewards, both departments must overcome short-termism, break through culture clashes and shrink the skillset gap.

• The biggest barrier to collaboration between HR and finance is a short-term mindset, with 71 percent saying their teams focus on quarters rather than future strategic direction.
• Culture clashes between departments was another top challenge with nearly a third (29 percent) ranking traditionally separate habits as the biggest barrier. Other barriers included mismatched skillsets (27 percentage) and organizational silos (17 percentage).
• HR teams also lack the skills to act on data and solve issues (70 percent), cultivate quantitative analysis and reasoning (67 percent) and use analytics to forecast workforce needs (55 percent).

HR and Finance Leaders Need One View of the Truth

The majority (80 percent) of organizations believe HR and finance teams are already helping them make better data-driven decisions. But, their teams will need to acquire new skills, but with an increased focus on collaboration, organizations will be able to gain even bigger business benefits:

• 88 percent of respondents believe HR and finance collaboration will improve business performance; 76 percent believe it will enhance organization agility.
• Over half (57 percent) of organizations plan to achieve more holistic, enterprise-wide insight through collaboration and 52 percent of HR and finance professionals believe it will help them become more strategic partners.

AI to Pave the Way to Greater Collaboration and Better Business Results

HR and finance professionals are looking to emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) to help drive business results:

• While a quarter (25 percent) of survey respondents are primarily using AI to identify at-risk talent and model their talent pipeline (22 percent), they are rarely using AI to forecast performance (18 percent) or find top talent (15 percent).
• Over the next year, 71 percent of survey respondents plan to use AI to predict high performing candidates in recruitment and source best-fit candidates with resume analysis (70 percent).
• Other AI priorities for survey respondents include modeling their talent pipeline (58 percent), flagging at-risk employees through attrition modeling (52 percent) and supporting employee interactions with chatbots (38 percent).

“The world of analytics and AI opens tremendous doors for HR to harness meaningful insights in order to make smarter decisions and create a talent advantage,” said Tom Davenport, Babson professor and analytics expert. “Seeing that so many HR professionals are planning to invest heavily in AI over the next year is promising. It means we’ll begin to see more strategic results and businesses competing on an entirely new level to find the right talent.”

Methodology

This survey interviewed 1,510 HR, finance and business professionals in late 2018. The respondents came from a variety of industries and geographies, and all were from companies with US$100 million of revenues or larger.

Oracle today announced Oracle ERP Cloud has been named a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Cloud ERP for Product-Centric Midsize Enterprises research report. Out of 14 products evaluated, Oracle ERP Cloud is listed as the only Leader in the Gartner analysis. A complimentary copy of the report is available here.

Gartner notes that “Leaders demonstrate a market-defining vision of how ERP product-centric systems and processes can be supported and improved by moving them to the cloud. They couple this with a clear ability to execute this vision through products, services and go-to-market strategies. They have a strong presence in the market and are growing their revenues and market shares. In the cloud ERP suite market, Leaders show a consistent ability to win deals with organizations of different sizes, and have a good depth of functionality across all areas of operational and administrative ERP. They have multiple proofs of successful deployments by customers based in their home region and elsewhere. Their offerings are frequently used by system integrator partners to support business transformation initiatives.”

“Our focus on creating a complete and innovative financial, operational, manufacturing and supply chain solution delivered natively on the Cloud is helping organizations of all sizes and across all industries drive better business outcomes,” said Rondy Ng, senior vice president, Oracle Applications Development. “We are proud to deliver on our promises for Oracle ERP Cloud and are very pleased to be recognized by Gartner as the sole Leader in this report. We believe this acknowledgement further validates Oracle’s commitment to delivering continuous innovation in our market-leading ERP Cloud for our customers.”

Oracle ERP Cloud includes complete ERP capabilities across Financials, Procurement, and Project Portfolio Management (PPM), as well as Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), and Governance Risk and Compliance (GRC). Together with Supply Chain Management (SCM) and native integration with the broader Oracle SaaS portfolio for Human Capital Management (HCM) and Customer Experience (CX), Oracle offers customers a practical, business-driven, rapid adoption path forward.

Oracle’s broad portfolio of financial management and planning cloud offerings have garnered industry recognition. Oracle ERP Cloud was named a Leader in Gartner’s most recent “Magic Quadrant for Cloud Core Financial Management Suites for Midsize, Large and Global Enterprises”, while Oracle was also positioned in the Leaders quadrant for the 2018 “Magic Quadrant for Cloud Financial Planning and Analysis Solutions” and in the 2018 “Magic Quadrant for Cloud Financial Close Solutions.”

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Cloud ERP for Product-Centric Midsize Enterprises, Mike Guay, John Van Decker, et al., 31 October 2018. Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Cloud Core Financial Management Suites for Midsize, Large and Global Enterprises, John Van Decker, Robert Anderson, Mike Guay, 29 May 2018. Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Cloud Financial Planning and Analysis Solutions, Christopher Iervolino, John Van Decker, 24 July 2018. Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Cloud Financial Close Solutions, John Van Decker, Christopher Iervolino, 26 July 2018.