Outdoor and Fashion retailer and manufacturer, Cape Union Mart International Pty Ltd, Inc. has selected Oracle to modernize its retail operations. With the Oracle Retail Cloud, the company plans to fuel growth across all sales channels with better inventory visibility and more sophisticated merchandise assortments that keep shoppers coming back for more.

“This is a complex project, touching virtually every part of our business. The Oracle team has partnered with us from start to finish; building our trust and giving us an insight into what we can expect in the implementation of the transformational project – we look forward to working with them and rebuilding our retail IT landscape into a world class environment, taking Cape Union Mart to the next level,” said Grant De Waal-Dubla, Group IT Executive, Cape Union Mart.

Cape Union Mart strives to deliver what their customers need with the right product in the right store at the right time. Until now, the brand has managed its retail assortments with a talented team and well-defined process in excel spreadsheets. As Cape Union Mart continued to grow, they needed a better way to manage their operations. With Oracle Retail, the brand can fully embrace automated, systemized workflows driven by dashboards and end to end reporting with a common user interface. This will lead to more seamless fulfillment and accurate demand forecasts.

“By choosing Oracle, Cape Union Mart can focus on business objectives and results, not technology. As a cloud provider, we take great pride in building appropriate real-time integration across the Oracle portfolio so our customers can get the information and results they needed quickly – whether that’s moving existing inventory or anticipating next seasons fashion trends and ensuring they are available for customers,” said Mike Webster, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Retail.

Cape Union Mart International Pty Ltd will implement several solutions in the Oracle Retail modern platform including Oracle Retail Merchandising Cloud Service, Oracle Retail Allocation Cloud Service, Oracle Retail Pricing Cloud Services, Oracle Retail Invoice Matching Cloud Service, Oracle Retail Integration Cloud Services, Oracle Retail Merchandise Financial Planning Cloud Services, Oracle Retail Assortment and Item Planning Cloud Service, Oracle Retail Science Platform Cloud Services, Oracle Retail Demand Forecasting Cloud Service, Oracle Retail Store Inventory Operations Cloud Service, Oracle Middleware Cloud Services, Oracle Warehouse Management Cloud and Oracle Financials Cloud. Cape Union Mart has partnered with Oracle Retail Consulting for the implementation.

Oracle today announced that Oracle Cloud Applications has achieved Impact Level 4 (IL4) Provisional Authorization from the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). With IL4, Oracle can now offer its software-as-a-service (SaaS) cloud suite to additional government agencies within the DoD community. Since the authorization was granted, the DoD has selected Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM) Cloud to help transform its HR operations in support of 900,000 civilian employees.

All organizations need comprehensive and adaptable technology to stay ahead of changing business and technology demands. For federal government agencies in particular, it’s even more critical to have a reliable, highly secure solution to navigate time-sensitive workflows and make strategic mission decisions. To meet these demands, Oracle Cloud Applications enables customers to benefit from best-in-class functionality, robust security, high-end scalability, mission-critical performance, and strong integration capabilities.

“At Oracle, our focus is centered on our customers’ needs. For U.S. Federal and Department of Defense customers, they need best in class, agile, and secure software to run their operations – and we can deliver that,” said Mark Johnson, SVP, Oracle Public Sector. “With built-in support for Impact Level 4, the DoD community can now take advantage of Oracle Cloud Applications to break down silos, quickly and easily embrace the latest innovations, and improve user engagement, collaboration, and performance.”

“The Department of Defense awarded a contract to Oracle HCM Cloud to support its enterprise human resource portfolio. The award modernizes its existing civilian personnel business process functions to enable improved streamlined approaches in support of the workforce. The DoD's Defense Manpower Data Center is leading the implementation of the HCM Cloud, which replaces numerous legacy systems and is targeted for full deployment in mid 2020,” according to the DMDC Director, Michael Sorrento.

Oracle has been a long-standing strategic technology partner of the US government, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the first customer to use Oracle’s flagship database software 35 years ago. Today, more than 500 government organizations take advantage of Oracle’s industry-leading technologies and superior performance.

The declining bee population is not just a problem for honey lovers; it’s a threat to the global food supply.

Oracle announced a partnership with The World Bee Project CIC in 2018, offering the use of its cloud storage and AI analytics tools to support the organization’s goals and innovations such as its BeeMark honey certification.

The World Bee Project is the first private organization to launch a global honeybee monitoring initiative to inform and implement actions to improve pollinator habitats, create more sustainable ecosystems, and improve food security, nutrition, and livelihoods by establishing a globally coordinated monitoring program for honeybees and eventually for key pollinator groups.

The World Bee Project Hive Network remotely collects data from varying environments through interconnected hives equipped with commercially available IoT sensors. The sensors combine colony-acoustics monitoring with other parameters such as brood temperature, humidity, hive weight, and apiary weather conditions. They also monitor and interpret the sound of a bee colony to assess colony behavior, strength, and health.

The World Bee Project Hive Network’s multiple local data sources provide a far richer view than any single data source to harness and enable global-scale computation to generate new insights into declining pollinator populations.

After the data has been validated by The World Bee Project database it can be fed into Oracle Cloud, which uses analytics tools including AI and data visualization to provide The World Bee Project with new insights into the relationship between bees and their varying environments. These new insights can be shared with smallholder farmers, scientists, researchers, governments, and other stakeholders.

“The partnership with Oracle will absolutely transform the scene as we can link AI with pollination and agricultural biodiversity,” said Sabiha Malik, founder and executive president of The World Bee Project CIC. “We have the potential to help transform the way the world grows food and to protect the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of smallholder farmers, but we depend entirely on stakeholders such as banks, agritech, insurance companies, and governments to sponsor and invest in our work so that we can begin to step toward fulfilling our mission.”

Oracle will be offering cloud computing technology and analytics tools to The World Bee Project to enable it to process data in collaboration with its science partner, the University of Reading, to enable science-based evidence to emerge.

Oracle is currently looking at funding models to support the expansion of The World Bee Project Hive Network to ensure a truly global view of the health of bee populations.

Watch The World Bee Project Video to Learn More

Read More Stories from Oracle Cloud

The World Bee Project is one of the thousands of innovative customers succeeding in the cloud. Read about others in Stories from Oracle Cloud: Business Successes. 

Digital service providers are transforming their monetization systems to prepare for the upcoming demands of 5G and future digital services. Oracle Communications’ new cloud native deployment option for Billing and Revenue Management (BRM) addresses these demands by combining the features and extensibility of a proven, convergent charging system with the efficiency of cloud and DevOps agility.

Oracle Communications’ cloud native BRM deployment option provides a modern monetization solution to capitalize on the opportunities presented by today’s mobile, fixed and cable digital services. It supports any service, industry or partner-enabled business model and provides a foundation for 5G network slicing and edge monetization.

“As the telecommunications industry prepares itself to take advantage of 5G, architectural agility will be essential to monetize next-generation services quickly and efficiently,” added John Abraham, principal analyst, Analysys Mason. “With its cloud native compliant, microservices-based architecture framework, the latest version of Oracle’s Billing and Revenue Management solution is well positioned to accelerate CSPs ability to support emerging 5G-enabled use cases.“

Cloud native BRM enables internal IT teams to incorporate DevOps practices to more quickly design, test and deploy new services. Organizations can optimize their operations by seamlessly managing business growth with efficient scaling and simplified updates, and by taking advantage of deployment in any public or private cloud infrastructure environment. BRM further increases IT agility when deployed on Oracle’s next generation Cloud Infrastructure, which features autonomous capabilities, adaptive intelligence and machine learning cyber security.

“Service providers and enterprises are looking for agile solutions to quickly monetize 5G and IoT services,” said Jason Rutherford, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Communications. “Cloud native BRM deployed on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure allows our customers to operate more efficiently, react quickly to competition and to pioneer new price plans and business models that capitalize on the digital revolution.”

Find out more about Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management, with modern monetization capabilities for 5G and the connected digital world. 

To learn more about Oracle Communications industry solutions, visit: Oracle Communications, LinkedIn, or join the conversation at Twitter @OracleComms.

New York Burger set out to shake up the local food scene by bringing American style burgers and barbeque dishes to Madrid. Today, the fast growing chain is doing exactly that. To keep up with the pace of expansion while keeping customers happy, New York Burger has added Oracle MICROS Simphony Point of Sale (POS) System to its technology menu to seamlessly connect servers and the kitchen. With real-time order sharing, cooks can immediately start an order, reducing the time it takes orders to arrive to hungry diners. Since deploying the Oracle Cloud solution, the chain has realized a 50 percent decrease in customer wait-time across its five restaurants.

“As the business grew, we found our existing solution was not up to the challenge, and inefficiencies meant our customers were kept waiting,” said Pablo Colmenares, founder, New York Burger. “Oracle has definitely helped us to streamline our operations. It is simple and fast to use, and utilizing the product helped us become a smarter business. Oracle has a great global reputation, there’s a reason why the biggest brands in the world trust Oracle. Every strong tree needs strong roots and Oracle is our roots.”

Along with improving service efficiencies, Oracle MICROS Simphony POS System has helped New York Burger streamline menu management, gaining immediate data and reporting on their customers’ favorite menu items. These insights have been especially helpful as the restaurant chain has revamped its menu to better match customers’ preferences, removing items that were not popular and reducing food waste.  

New York Burger has also relied on Oracle’s solutions to further its green-friendly approach to operating its restaurants, enabling them to reduce waste and more closely align with its goal of being an environmentally-friendly restaurant. Oracle’s solution specifically helps management minimize excess costs, by reducing any unnecessary ingredient surplus.

“This innovative chain took a chance on bringing a new kind of cuisine to Madrid – to rave reviews. But today, the quality of the experience customers have at a restaurant must be in parallel with the quality of the food,” said Simon de Montfort Walker, senior vice president and general manager for Oracle Food and Beverage. “With Oracle, New York Burger is able to speed service and give servers more time with customers - delivering an unforgettable meal on both sides of the equation. And with better insights into tastes, trends and what’s selling well, New York Burger can reduce waste and conserve revenue while giving customers a menu that will keep them coming back again and again.”

Please view New York Burger’s video: New York Burger Delivers Joyful Food Sustainably with Oracle

I just got back from a press tour in New York, where the most common question I heard was: What's Oracle's competitive advantage in the cloud? I believe it's the completeness of our offering. Here's why.

The three main components of the cloud are the application, platform, and infrastructure layers. But most enterprises don't think about the cloud in terms of these silos. They take a single, holistic view of their problems and how to solve them.

Because we play in all layers of the cloud—and are continually adding integrations between the layers—we are in a unique position to help.

The application layer refers to software such as enterprise resource planning, human capital management, supply chain management, and customer engagement. These are core applications that enterprises rely on to run their businesses. Oracle is the established leader in this area, and we're continuing to innovate and differentiate by integrating artificial intelligence, blockchain, and other important new technologies into these applications.

These applications sit on the platform layer, which is powered by the Oracle Autonomous Database. We've taken our 40-plus years of expertise and combined it with advanced machine learning technologies to create the market's only self-driving and self-repairing database.

The platform layer is also where our analytics, security, and integration capabilities live. Analytics are helping businesses answer questions they couldn't answer before—and ask new questions they never would have thought of. And security, which used to be seen as an inhibitor to cloud adoption, is actually now a driver. Enterprises are saying, "Oracle's data center is going to be more secure than what we can manage on our own."

The application and platform layers rest upon Oracle's Generation 2 Cloud Infrastructure. Our compute, storage, and networking capabilities are purpose-built to run new types of workloads in a more secure and performant way than our competitors. We plan to open 20 Oracle Cloud data centers by the end of next year, which works out to one new data center every 23 days. And we're hiring 2,000 new people to support this infrastructure business.

Another differentiator for Oracle is our commitment to openness and interoperability in the cloud. As an example, we have a very strategic relationship with Microsoft. Joint customers can migrate to the cloud, build net new applications and even do things like run Microsoft analytics on top of an Oracle Database. We've also announced a collaboration with VMware to help customers run vSphere workloads in Oracle Cloud and to support Oracle software running on VMware.

We live in a hybrid and multicloud world. Oracle's comprehensive cloud offering, combined with our interoperability and multicloud support, helps customers achieve outcomes they simply couldn't with other vendors.

Watch Steve Daheb discuss the Oracle Cloud advantage on Cheddar and Yahoo Finance.

Leading French DSO GRDF has rolled out more than four million smart meters, powered by Oracle Meter Data Management (MDM). This milestone is part of GRDF’s larger smart meter initiative that is on track to reach 11 million households by 2023. With this program, GRDF can further realize its vision of Improving energy management and enhancing customer satisfaction. GRDF serves 90 percent of France’s gas market.

“The move to smart meters and implementation of new digitized functionalities are critical to delivering a natural gas network that fosters energy transition for our territories,” said Vincent PERTUIS, GRDF Director for Smart Gas Metering Program. “With Oracle MDM, GRDF will be able to use data to continue to reimagine how we serve customers, accelerate decarbonization, and increase the flexibility and reliability of our network.” 

Using Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management (MDM), GRDF is modernizing its natural gas transmission network to make it an effective tool for the energy transition. The result will be a fully digitized and connected network that will deliver benefits to customers and the environment by integrating renewable gas, enhancing safety, providing data to better manage gas supply, and linking with other networks to enhance flexibility and storage capacity. 

The smart meter roll-out will provide GRDF with massive amounts of interval meter data that will be essential to running a more efficient, cleaner network. Oracle Utilities MDM helps energy providers not only capture the data but securely optimise its use and management to support core operations and fuel innovation.

“GRDF’s smart grid modernization project is the largest in the world and hitting the four million smart meter marker represents tremendous progress,” said Francois Vazille, vice president of JAPAC & EMEA, Oracle Utilities. “Oracle MDM is a critical component to GRDF’s digital transformation journey and in opening up new opportunities for GRDF to serve its customers with clean, reliable energy.”

B Hotel Brasília, an independent luxury hotel located on Brasília’s spectacular Eixo Monumental stretch, has deployed an integrated suite of Oracle Hospitality and Oracle Food and Beverage cloud solutions to modernize its operations across the property and offer guests a stellar stay. 

“Our search for technology partners naturally led us to Oracle because of its industry recognition and the solution’s ability to meet our requirements,” said Ana Paula Ernesto, CEO, B Hotel Brasília. “Transitioning to cloud technology enables our staff to focus less on managing technology and more on curating the luxury experiences our guests demand. With a single view of operations across our hotel and dining facilities we can ensure guests are recognized across touchpoints while providing management with visibility into property performance.”  

Oracle Hospitality OPERA Property provides B Hotel Brasília, which offers 306 rooms and a rooftop bar and pool overlooking Brasília’s skyline, with a single view of every guest touchpoint from reservations and check-in to dining. The technology arms hotel personnel with detailed guest information allowing them to deliver more personalized services. In addition, OPERA enables hotel management to prepare and deliver a variety of reports for management including arrivals, departures, revenue and ratings – all from an easy-to-use dashboard view.

The Oracle Food and Beverage MICROS Simphony Cloud Point of Sale system for restaurants was implemented across the hotel’s dining venues including B Restaurant, Bar 16 and the Lobby Bar, offering wait staff the ability to take orders from mobile devices and deliver faster and more accurate food and beverage service to diners. 

“With our Oracle hospitality and food and beverage cloud solutions, we are uniquely positioned to serve as a strategic partner to both independent hotels and global chains that want to increase guest satisfaction, streamline operations and increase on-property revenues,” said Tanya Pratt, Associate Vice President, Oracle Hospitality. “With B Hotel Brasília’s digital transformation they have the power to create a competitive advantage with stellar service that can increase the property’s recognition globally.”

Watch the B Hotel Brasília video to learn how Oracle Hospitality Solutions are helping to drive the property’s growth.

Learn more about Oracle’s Hospitality Solutions here.

Myer, Australia’s largest department store chain, embarked on a digital transformation to deliver more compelling products to customers. Carrying many products across 61 stores, Myer offers a wide range of cosmetics, clothing, footwear, toys, and homewares. By embracing Oracle Retail, Myer transformed its end-to-end merchandise systems, inventory processes, and planning capabilities, resulting in reduced stock and improved sales, margin, and markdown reduction. Today, Myer is better able to deliver the right inventory to delight customers across its properties.

“I am optimistic about the ability of our Oracle Merchandise Planning tools to improve the efficiency of our buying teams and to deliver a more profitable, more localised product range for our customers,” said Allan Winstanley, Chief Merchandise Officer, Myer.

The project was a business-led initiative supported by IT. The team established clear goals and expectations to achieve immediate business benefits and support long-term growth objectives. Myer built a solid foundation with Oracle Retail Merchandise Financial Planning and Oracle Retail Size Profile Optimization with support from Tata Consulting Services (TCS), a Platinum and Cloud Elite level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN).

Phase one of the implementations delivered immediate results with a stock reduction in time for holiday planning. In phase two, a cross-functional solution development team adopted an agile implementation methodology. The team worked in three weeks sprints to deliver regular solution functionality for seasonal strategies, item planning, clustering, option planning, and assortment planning from Oracle Retail Planning and Optimization. This approach allowed Myer to enjoy accelerated benefits and the project paid for itself.

“The project was delivered across various teams, including Merchandise, IT and Tata Consulting Services (TCS), where we transitioned from waterfall to an agile project delivery approach, which ensured the success of the project,” said Troy Smith, Chief Information Officer, Myer.

“Automate and simplify. We always encourage our customers to embrace these attributes and focus on operational excellence,” said Mike Webster, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Retail. “By establishing a strong foundation, Myer can pivot to the customer and localize the assortment based on store demographics, climate, and other store attributes.”

The Myer Oracle project received multiple awards including the 2018 ACS Gold Disruptor Award, 2018-2019TCS APAC 4.0 EXCEL ERATE Best Project Embracing Business 4.0, and the 2017- 2018 Myer inspirational Team Award.

A large majority (71 percent) of utilities now use cloud software, up from just 45 percent three years ago according to a new Oracle survey. Improving customer experience was noted as the key driver for increased cloud investment. But while progress has been made, 85 percent of respondents still cite security as a top concern and noted that regulatory acceptance remains a barrier to cloud adoption.

“Just a few years ago, utilities looked at cloud computing with skepticism at best. Today, many realize it’s essential to their survival,” said Brian Bradford, vice president, industry solutions, Oracle. “Utilities are increasingly seeing cloud as a fundamental asset in meeting ever-evolving expectations, mitigating security concerns, and turning data into an opportunity to modernize and evolve their operations to better serve constituents and customers.”

The report, conducted by research firm Zpryme, surveyed more than 150 global utility leaders to better understand the pace and breadth of cloud computing adoption. Respondents spanned investor-owned, municipal, cooperative and district/federal utilities representing electric, gas, water, and renewables. To download the full report, visit: https://etsinsights.com/reports/the-acceleration-of-cloud-computing-for-utilities/

Changing Customer Expectations

Customers are increasingly looking for more information regarding their overall utility usage and bill and how to lessen the impact of both. And they expect this with the high level of service and personalization that they are enjoying in other sectors, such as retail and banking. Utilities see cloud technologies as a means to provide the speed and control to meet these customer expectations. So, it was no surprise to see continued investment in customer experience and engagement (31 percent) and customer information (29 percent) cloud systems in the top five investment priorities for utilities in the coming years.

Drowning in Data

Sixty-four percent of utilities noted that cloud computing is critical to my company’s future success. A key driver is the need to better manage an ever-growing pool of data coming from smart meters, IoT sensors, customers’ home energy devices, and more. Utilities realize that it is becoming too great a task and risk to manage this influx without a significant investment in tools that can capture and analyze grid edge, supply chain, and customer data quickly. Utilities hope to use the technological flexibility provided by cloud computing to innovate by using data to solve business problems from grid optimization to managing distributed energy resources (DERs).

“Utilities are seeing the impact that digital transformation is having on their business model,” said Jason Rodriguez, CEO of Zpryme. “The challenge is so much greater than simply capturing millions of disparate data points. Utilities need IT tools to manage and drive better business decisions and cloud computing provides the agility to more effectively integrate data predictively use it.”

Security Concerns Remain

Utilities remain concerned about security (85 percent) and privacy (81 percent) and also rated these as the biggest barriers they face when it comes to using or expanding cloud computing. Concerns, however, were not around the vulnerability of cloud computing technology itself, but rather a growing barrage of increasingly sophisticated cybersecurity threats. Whether it is IoT devices, field area networks, or 5G networks, utilities are operating in a hyper-connected digital ecosystem that can provide new and varied opportunities for nefarious actors to expose their networks. Utilities recognize that they need to stay vigilant and that will require help from both regulators and vendors.

Regulatory Right-Sizing

While improving, many regulators globally still don’t allow for utilities to earn a rate of return on their cloud investments, which impedes upgrading legacy IT systems. While utilities recognize the role that regulators play in approving their prudent expenditures, 26 percent cited regulatory acceptance as a continued barrier to cloud adoption. The majority of utility respondents (75 percent), however, also note that regulators can play a strong role in helping protect customer privacy and security.

Clouds Ahead

Many utilities dipped their toe in the cloud waters with enterprise applications, such as enterprise resource management (ERP) or human capital management (HCM) and 74 percent plan to spend more on cloud in the next 3-5 years. While a move to better serve and engage customers is driving this next phase of cloud adoption, operational system investments are not far behind. Forty-three percent of utilities have increased their operational spending by at least 25 percent over 2015 levels.

To learn more about Oracle’s utility solutions, please visit: www.oracle.com/utilities

Why does one video go viral and another lose viewers? News agencies, publishers, and entertainment companies are becoming increasingly methodical about measuring audiences’ engagement. Aiconix, a German startup based in Hamburg, is applying artificial intelligence to ferret out the insights needed to help organizations answer those questions.

Deploying groups of testers in a neurolab in its home city, aiconix uses electroencephlogram technology to measure viewers’ emotions, including surprise or boredom, while watching video clips. It’s developed AI software called aingine based on data that can predict whether certain factors in clips, such as abrupt subject matter shifts or too little connection between a main theme and protagonist’s words, cause viewers to switch off. In addition, the software can identify what roles speakers play in a video, help journalists quickly identify and label subjects in video clips, and automatically produce transcripts with time codes, taking away some of the grunt work of TV production.

Thanks to a reliable and high-performing IT cloud infrastructure from Oracle, aiconix can offer its customers fast, secure performance with the ability to scale. The company, part of the Oracle Global Startup Ecosystem, is using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, including state-of-the-art graphics processors, to train its AI system. Oracle’s startup program connects promising startups with Oracle’s cloud resources and enterprise expertise.

“We needed a reliable data center in Germany where our aingine could run, scale, and grow with us,” says Eugen Gross, CEO and co-founder of aiconix. “Oracle Cloud Infrastructure provides us with a range of cloud resources and features we need. In addition, being part of the Global Startup Ecosystem gives us the personal support and direct access to customers.”

So far, the company has attracted customers at organizations including a large European press agency and a German news photography agency.

Read More Stories from Oracle Cloud

Aiconix is one of the thousands of customers on its journey to the cloud. Read about others in Stories from Oracle Cloud: Business Successes. 

Oracle is today recognizing those Americas customers who are charting new paths and reimagining the building industry through technology with the 2019 Oracle Construction and Engineering Excellence Awards. Building on the Oracle Aconex Connect Awards, this new awards program highlights noteworthy customers that are successfully improving project delivery across industries.

Project- and asset-intensive organizations face numerous challenges, including growing project complexity, rising competition, fragmented project supply chains, and increasing risks. Selected from a large number of entrants, this year’s winners demonstrated compelling results in overcoming these challenges through their use of Oracle’s Construction and Engineering solution suite, including Oracle’s Primavera solutions, Oracle Aconex and Oracle Textura Payment Management.

“The Oracle Construction and Engineering Excellence Awards winners represent organizations of all sizes that have demonstrated remarkable success from the digital transformation of their businesses across the project and asset lifecycle,” said Mark Webster, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Construction and Engineering. “From significant productivity gains, to better payment outcomes across the supply chain, to unlocking project intelligence for smarter decision making, the improvements realized by these organizations underscore their leadership in driving project delivery forward, with benefits that extend to all stakeholders. We congratulate the honorees and are thrilled to recognize their accomplishments.”

Select results from the 2019 Oracle Construction and Engineering Excellence Awards winners:

• Austin Commercial achieved enterprise-wide standardization with Oracle Textura Payment Management, reducing pay application processing time from four to five days to just two days.
• Ameren Corporation reduced the time spent evaluating project justifications by 90 percent (from 30-60 minutes, to just three to five) with Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (EPPM) and Oracle’s Primavera Unifier.
• BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina accomplished organizational transformation with the help of Oracle’s Primavera Unifier and is now able to close internal work orders 50 percent faster than previously.
• DPR Construction eliminated 360 accounting hours per week through its implementation of Oracle Textura Payment Management and a direct link to its ERP system, meaning tens of millions of dollars now reach subcontractors up to seven days faster.
• Sage Homes Northwest sped up work package assignment to new projects by 66 percent utilizing Oracle Primavera Cloud.

Customers were nominated for the 2019 Oracle Construction and Engineering Excellence Awards in the following categories:

• Data-driven Insights
• Enterprise-wide Standardization
• Innovation in Sustainability
• Innovator of the Year (Individual award)
• Platform Expansion
• Social Impact Project of the Year
• Solutions Implementation
• Systems Integration

In addition, honorees were recognized for their achievements in the following segments:  Energy and Resources, Industrial Manufacturing, Public Infrastructure, and Residential and Commercial.

Below is a full list of 2019 Oracle Construction and Engineering Excellence Awards winners in the Americas:

• Ameren Corporation (Ameren) – Platform Expansion in Energy and Resources, Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (EPPM), Primavera Unifier
• AMP United, LLC – Enterprise-wide Standardization in Residential and Commercial, Oracle Primavera Cloud
• ATCO Ltd. (ATCO) – Enterprise-wide Standardization in Energy and Resources, Primavera P6 EPPM, Primavera Unifier
• Austin Industries (Austin Commercial) – Enterprise-wide Standardization in Public Infrastructure, Oracle Textura Payment Management
• BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina – Enterprise-wide Standardization in Residential and Commercial, Primavera Unifier
• DPR Construction – Systems Integration in Residential and Commercial, Oracle Textura Payment Management
• Facebook – Innovator of the Year, Jason Mennig of the Data Center Engineering and Construction business unit, and Company award for Solutions Implementation in Residential and Commercial, Primavera P6 EPPM
• FirstEnergy Corp. – Systems Integration in Energy and Resources, Primavera P6 EPPM, Primavera Unifier and Oracle Primavera Portfolio Management (OPPM)
• Hampton Roads Sanitation District – Systems Integration in Public Infrastructure, Primavera P6 EPPM, Primavera Unifier
• Intercorp Retail – Solutions Implementation in Residential and Commercial, Primavera Unifier
• Lendlease Corporation – Innovator of the Year for Data-driven Insights in Residential and Commercial, Michael Mull, Oracle Textura Payment Management, Textura Business Analytics and Innovator of the Year for Enterprise-wide Standardization in Residential and Commercial, Dominic Giannola, Oracle’s Primavera P6 EPPM
• Matthew Harris – Innovator of the Year for Solutions Implementation in Public Infrastructure, Oracle Aconex
• Monteith Construction Corp. – Solutions Implementation in Residential and Commercial, Oracle Primavera Cloud
• Oceaneering International, Inc. – Innovator of the Year for Enterprise-wide Standardization in Energy and Resources, Dalbert Varnell Jr., Primavera P6 EPPM
• Sage Homes Northwest – Systems Integration in Residential and Commercial, Oracle Primavera Cloud
• VESTA – Enterprise-wide Standardization in Residential and Commercial, Oracle’s Primavera Unifier

Read about our Global 2019 Oracle Construction and Engineering Excellence Awards winners: https://www.oracle.com/corporate/awards/construction-engineering/winners.html

While ocean shipping has been steadily growing in recent years, multiple pressures are impacting the predictability of the far-flung supply chains and pressuring industry profits. Key to navigating these challenges for shippers, ocean carriers, terminal operators, and other parties involved with shipping ocean freight is better visibility and real-time access to information.

That’s a challenge given the sheer number of participants in a single shipment—and often leads to delays, disputes, and significant extra costs for shippers and carriers. But things are changing thanks to the help of emerging technology and the formation of a new blockchain consortium in this space pioneered by CargoSmart.

For the last year, CargoSmart and Oracle have been working together to develop a blockchain solution that aims to simplify the shipping documentation process and deliver a single source of truth for trusted, real-time sharing of information, thereby increasing trust and boosting efficiency.

More recently, CargoSmart announced a significant milestone in forming the Global Shipping Business Network (GSBN) blockchain consortium. Comprising of nine leading ocean carriers and terminal operators: CMA CGM, COSCO SHIPPING Lines, COSCO SHIPPING Ports, Hapag-Lloyd, Hutchison Ports, OOCL, Port of Qingdao, PSA International, and Shanghai International Port Group. This not-for-profit joint venture aims to accelerate the digital transformation of the shipping industry, with CargoSmart providing the resources underpinning it.

“The close cooperation between our R&D group and Oracle’s blockchain team has already helped to accelerate the development of some pilot applications. By leveraging Oracle’s enriched technical support and advice, CargoSmart has been able to achieve high levels of operational capability, reduce R&D time, and significantly improve the productivity of its blockchain application developers,” said Romney Wong, Chief Technology Officer of CargoSmart.

Watch the CargoSmart Video

Watch this video to learn more about how CargoSmart is leveraging Oracle Blockchain Platform to bring transparency and trust into the complex systems behind CargoSmart’s logistics and shipping management.

Read More Stories from Oracle Cloud

CargoSmart is one of the thousands of customers on its journey to the cloud. Read about others in Stories from Oracle Cloud: Business Successes. 

Oracle has been named a Leader in Gartner’s 2019 “Magic Quadrant for Cloud Financial Close Solutions” report for the third consecutive year. Out of 10 companies evaluated, Oracle is positioned as a Leader based on its ability to execute and completeness of vision. Oracle is the only Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) vendor to be named a Leader in both Cloud Financial Planning and Analysis Solutions and Cloud Financial Close Solutions Magic Quadrant reports. A complimentary copy of the report is available here.

According to the report, “Leaders provide mature offerings that meet market demand and have demonstrated the vision necessary to sustain their market position as requirements evolve. The hallmark of Leaders is that they focus on, and invest in, their offerings to the point where they lead the market and can affect its overall direction. As a result, Leaders can be vendors to watch as you try to understand how new market offerings might evolve. Leaders typically possess a large, satisfied customer base (relative to the size of the market) and enjoy high visibility within the market. Their size and financial strength enable them to remain viable in a challenging economy. Leaders typically respond to a wide market audience by supporting broad market requirements; however, they may fail to meet the specific needs of vertical markets or other more-specialized segments.”

“As the EPM Cloud market matures, we are seeing more organizations looking for an integrated EPM suite to connect their financial and operational planning with financial close and reporting processes,” said Hari Sankar, Group Vice President, Product Management, Oracle.  “We are proud to be the only vendor acknowledged as a Leader by Gartner in these two Magic Quadrant reports related to EPM.”

Oracle EPM Cloud is the only complete EPM solution on a common platform that addresses financial and operational planning, consolidation and close, data management, reporting, and analysis processes. With native integration with the broader Oracle Cloud Applications suite, which includes Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM), Human Capital Management (HCM) and Customer Experience (CX) applications, Oracle helps customers to stay ahead of changing expectations, build adaptable organizations, and realize the potential of the latest innovations.

Oracle’s portfolio of enterprise performance management applications has garnered industry recognition. Oracle was recently named a Leader in Gartner’s 2019 “Magic Quadrant for Cloud Financial Planning and Analysis Solutions” for Oracle EPM Cloud, making it the only vendor to be named a Leader in both of Gartner’s 2019 Magic Quadrants related to enterprise performance management.

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Cloud Financial Close Solutions, Robert Anderson, John Van Decker, Greg Leiter, 21 October 2019

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Cloud Financial Planning and Analysis Solutions, Robert Anderson, John Van Decker, Greg Leiter, 8 August 2019

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Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

The Pennsylvania State University, one of the world’s leading higher education and research institutions, has selected Oracle Student Financial Planning Cloud to support its “One Penn State 2025” strategic vision to transform education delivery, focusing on student engagement and support. The offering will be an integral component in the university’s efforts to help reduce the cost of education while enhancing student outcomes and success.

Student Financial Planning is a key pillar in Oracle Student Cloud, a complete suite of modules designed to support the entire student lifecycle, including traditional and non-traditional learning models, with powerful automation and optimization capabilities.

Consistently ranked among the top one percent of the world’s universities, Penn State includes 24 campuses, nearly 100,000 students and 31,000 faculty and staff, all focused on creating, sharing and applying knowledge to make a positive impact on communities across the world. Acknowledging the ever-increasing student debt and drop out crises U.S. college students face, Penn State will use Oracle Student Financial Planning Cloud to help empower students to make more informed academic and financial aid decisions to accomplish their academic, professional and personal life goals.

By providing increased transparency and better management of financial aid resources, Oracle Student Financial Planning Cloud and Oracle Student Cloud will streamline financial aid processes and deliver invaluable, data-backed insights into student behaviors and successes, thus freeing administrators to focus more on supporting the academic needs of its students.

“Penn State is pleased to select Oracle’s Student Financial Planning product as a first step in transitioning our student system to the cloud and to further the institution’s strategic goals,” said Michael J. Büsges, senior director, Enterprise Projects at Penn State. “Oracle has an established track record in meeting the needs of its Higher Education customers, and we look forward to working together on this important initiative.”  

Higher education institutions today are under intense pressure to enroll best-fit students, improve outcomes, and ensure student access – and be able to do more with less. At the same time, today’s students demand modern, consumer-like experiences and engagement with institutions. With $2.9 billion in financial aid (representing 15 million automated packages) already processed through Oracle Student Financial Planning Cloud, Oracle has proven solutions to help universities create a seamless student experience that leads to students’ academic success. With Oracle Student Financial Planning, universities are able to spend more time advising students on their financial aid choices and less time packaging their aid, which leads to improved student outcomes, elevated institutional standing and greater operational efficiency. Oracle Student Financial Planning also supports traditional, continued and online educational programs, as well as administrators’ compliance and integration needs.

“Leading institutions such as Penn State know that by simplifying and optimizing their operations they will be able to use resources efficiently and maximize funding sources,” said Vivian Wong, group vice president of Higher Education Development at Oracle. “Oracle’s commitment to supporting the higher education market includes our belief that no student should sacrifice their academic goals due to cost and we have created powerful cloud solutions to help universities tackle this challenge head on.”

Telecom Fiji, one of the largest communications providers in the remote South Pacific Fiji archipelago, needed to accelerate its digital transformation to meet the increasing demand for connectivity from local residents, businesses and tourists.

To speed up decision making to enhance customer service, Telecom Fiji is leveraging AI-powered algorithms from Oracle’s cloud-based Autonomous Data Warehouse and Analytics to integrate and sift through increasing amounts of data from multiple sources to produce actionable insights in minutes.

In the past, the IT staff spent weeks in manually-intensive processes of aggregating and correlating the data which raised the risk of errors being introduced into the results. Reports were also often late. The database administrators wrote SQL queries to generate raw data and then feed those results back to an analytics team for correlation in spreadsheets.

The autonomous database provisions easily and quickly in minutes to improve time to market, self-patches to eliminate downtime for maintenance, and auto scales capacity on demand for flexibility to maximize performance and minimize costs. Telecom Fiji would have had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get equally, or less powerful equipment on-premises in its data center to power the same kind of data warehouse. 

The front-end Oracle Analytics platform is used to create dashboards to visualize and detail sales and marketing performance, product performance, service usage trends, service-delivery performance, and other key indicators.

“We can ask our IT staff to come up with ideas or innovative solutions on how they can use the analytics. Then they will be performing more of an advisory role to management,” said Shalvin Narayan, Head of IT, Telecom Fiji. “It did surpass my expectations because the amount of functionality and performance it was providing, with respect to the amount of investment was marvelous.”

Watch the Telecom Fiji Video

In this video, Shalvin Narayan, Head of IT for Telecom Fiji, shares how the company is using Autonomous Database to produce real-time actionable insights in minutes rather than weeks.

Read More Stories from Oracle Cloud

Telecom Fiji is one of the thousands of customers on its journey to the cloud. Read about others in Stories from Oracle Cloud: Business Successes. 

Today, Forrester Research named Oracle a leader in translytical data platforms, a database category which can handle a wide range of transactional and analytic workloads. “The Forrester Wave™: Translytical Data Platforms, Q4 2019” report¹ cites that, “unlike other vendors, Oracle uses a dual-format database (row and columns for the same table) to deliver optimal translytical performance,” and that “customers like Oracle’s capability to support many workloads including OLTP, IoT, microservices, multimodel, data science, AI/ML, spatial, graph, and analytics.”

“Oracle is pleased to be acknowledged as a leader by Forrester for its translytical database capabilities,” said Juan Loaiza, Executive Vice President, Mission-Critical Database Technology, Oracle. “Oracle is setting the bar for the industry by offering a single converged database that brings together both transaction processing and analytic capabilities to provide our customers a mission-critical translytical data platform. Our converged database also provides built-in machine learning, spatial, graph, and JSON capabilities enabling our customers to easily run many kinds of workloads against the same data.”

The report states that Translytical is a hot, emerging market that delivers a unified data platform to support all kinds of workloads. The sweet spot is the ability to perform all of these workloads within a single database, leveraging innovation in in-memory, multimodel, distributed, and cloud architectures. Translytical databases can support various use cases including real-time insights, machine learning, streaming analytics, extreme transactional processing, and operational reporting.

Forrester reports on Oracle’s Translytical platform for Oracle environments. The report cites Oracle Database in-memory, an option that extends Oracle Database to support analytics in the same database as the one running transactions. Existing Oracle applications do not require any changes to the application in order to leverage Oracle Database in-memory. Unlike other vendors, Oracle uses a dual-format database (row and columnar representations for the same table) to deliver optimal translytical performance. In addition, Oracle leverages the Oracle Exadata appliance that supports a large-scale flash cache to perform fast in-memory and in-flash columnar operations. Customers like Oracle’s capability to support many workloads including OLTP, IoT, microservices, multimodel, data science, AI/ML, spatial, graph, and analytics.

According to the report, customers like the platform’s ease of use, ease of expanding existing Oracle applications to take advantage of translytics, general data security capabilities, and technical support, as well as the Cloud at Customer offering.

Download a complimentary copy of “The Forrester Wave™: Translytical Data Platforms, Q4 2019.”

[1] Source: “The Forrester Wave™: Translytical Data Platforms Q4 2019,” 23 October 2019.

Oracle Health Sciences, a leader in eClinical technology and Phlexglobal, pioneers in the provision of Trial Master File (TMF) technology and services for the global life sciences industry, have announced enhanced integrations to accelerate the speed and accuracy of regulatory compliance and inspection readiness in clinical trials.

A TMF is a requirement that all sponsors and contract research organizations (CROs) must meet to assure that the rights, safety and well-being of trial subjects are protected, that their trials are being conducted in accordance with Good Clinical Practice (GCP) principles, and that the clinical trial data is credible to ensure audit readiness.

Phlexglobal’s PhlexEview TMF management system uses automation to streamline processes, has an open architecture to ensure easy data integration, and provides advanced functionality designed to better facilitate TMF Management.

The Oracle Health Sciences eClinical platform, integrated with the TMF, provides a comprehensive, proven and best-in-class clinical trial ecosystem for life science organizations. Oracle Health Sciences provides key integration components (i.e., data staging, business rule compliance, target data staging, and API processing) to ensure seamless and successful integrations with its applications.

Standards are Critical

Other eClinical solutions only support clinical trial functions in silos. The ability to bring together the collective institutional memory and the facilitation between systems and team members is critical, and addresses an unmet need. The challenges in integration of eClinical systems stem from the lack of standards.

Phlexglobal’s Chief Strategy Officer Karen Roy is highly active in the TMF Reference Model, an industry-led initiative to define these standards—the TMF Reference Model is now widely adopted as the TMF structure of choice. In addition, the group has developed an exchange mechanism for vendor interoperability. This critical initiative establishes a common language (both business and technical exchange mechanism) enabling different organizational departments and companies to automate the exchange of information, which satisfies end-to-end requirements and validation.

The adoption of industry standards is critical to plug-and-play coexistence in the eClinical ecosystem and what is required is a deep understanding of the right type of integration at the right time for the different integration points. The TMF Reference Model Exchange mechanism facilitates these integrations by providing a common language amongst all eClinical vendors. Eliminating inefficiencies and bottlenecks associated with disparate data silos is critical to the goal of reducing cycle times in clinical trials. Today, regulatory authorities are placing more emphasis on contemporariness and timeliness of the TMF content they receive from sponsors and CROs. To achieve this, it is critical to ensure and document most of the content quality, as specified in the ALCOA-C guidance, prior to the content being transferred to the TMF. Together, Oracle Health Sciences and Phlexglobal address this challenge. 

“Our integration with Oracle Health Sciences’ industry-leading applications will save organizations significant resources, as documents only have to be checked once early in the process, which will ensure that any issues can be found and corrected in a timely manner enhancing overall quality,” said John McNeill, CEO of Phlexglobal. “Our collaboration represents a leap forward in improving clinical trials and controlling runaway costs and timelines. Our life science customers will be able to leverage industry KPIs to support business process optimization and business intelligence in clinical study startup, strengthening our regulatory compliance and global trial oversight capabilities.”

“Adoption of industry standards is critical to plug-and-play coexistence in the eClinical ecosystem,” said James Streeter, global vice president life sciences product strategy, Oracle Health Sciences. “What’s required is a deep understanding of the right type of integration at the right time for the different integration points. The TMF Reference Model Exchange Mechanism facilitates these integrations by providing a common language amongst all eClinical vendors. We strongly support this initiative.”

Phlexglobal is a Silver level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN).

Phlexglobal and Oracle representatives will be available to discuss this collaboration at:

• Phlexglobal TMF World Forum & User Conference (Beaconsfield, UK)
  
  
  • Nov. 12-13
  • https://www.phlexglobal.com/2019-tmf-world-forum-uk
• 9^th US Trial Master File Summit TMF Summit (Orlando, FL)
  
  
  • Jan. 21-23
  • https://tmfsummit.com/us

To manage complex environments globally, leading higher education institutions The Juilliard School and Rutgers University are turning to Oracle Cloud. Both institutions, looking to accelerate student success through more efficient operations across multiple schools and campuses, have chosen Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Cloud, Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM) Cloud, and Oracle Student Cloud.

Founded in 1905, The Juilliard School is a world-famous leader in performing arts education. The school’s mission is to provide the highest caliber of artistic education for gifted musicians, dancers, and actors from around the world. Located in New York City, Juilliard offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in dance, drama and music. Beyond its New York campus, Juilliard is now defining new directions in global performing arts education through its new branch campus in Tianjin, China, The Tianjin Juilliard School, and the global K-12 curricula.

Adopting a global operating model created challenges and complexity for Juilliard’s IT staff. Oracle Cloud provides a unified platform that will enable Juilliard to deliver an exceptional experience in both English and Chinese, and importantly, can be managed with existing IT resources. Once deployed, the Oracle Student Cloud solution will support approximately 2,000 Juilliard students across both campuses and 800 faculty and staff using the ERP, Student, and HCM Cloud solutions in New York.

“The opening of The Tianjin Juilliard School will broaden access to Juilliard’s world-class performing arts education across China and Asia,” said Carl Young, CIO of The Juilliard School. “With Oracle Cloud we will be able to provide our campuses in New York and Tianjin with unified, modern, multi-lingual systems that will have a significant impact on information management, which will ultimately help us better serve our students.”

Rutgers is a leading national research university and the state of New Jersey’s preeminent, comprehensive public institution of higher education. Established in 1766, the university is the eighth oldest higher education institution in the United States and home to more than 150 undergraduate majors, more than 400 graduate programs, and 300 research centers and institutes.

The daunting scale of Rutgers—with more than 70,000 students across 29 different schools and colleges at several campus locations—means it faced different, yet similarly formidable, issues of complexity. As part of a bold five-year plan to modernize and unify its key systems, Rutgers chose Oracle Cloud. 

“We strive to provide new and better experiences for our students,” said Michele Norin, senior vice president and chief information officer at Rutgers University. “The size and scale of Rutgers presents many difficulties as we work to manage and develop our systems. Oracle Cloud helps us meet our goals, stay on the forefront of higher education as it evolves, and enable our students to be more successful.”

Oracle Student Cloud is an integral component to an institution’s efforts to reduce educational costs while enhancing student outcomes and success. Oracle SFP Cloud streamlines the financial aid processes and delivers invaluable, data-backed insights into student successes, freeing administrators to focus more on supporting the academic needs of its students. Oracle ERP Cloud provides the financial solutions needed for institutions to enhance productivity, reduce costs and improve controls. Oracle HCM Cloud supports the changing business requirements around talent management and talent acquisition while furthering workforce productivity.