Oracle customers say that their key goals are to be innovative and able to implement new ideas that change the way we live and work. Innovation plays a central role in driving economic growth. In high-growth emerging markets, innovation enables businesses to produce more with less. In low-growth mature markets, innovation enables businesses to provide better products and services. In fact, 71 percent of companies agree that innovation is the #1 factor in competitiveness. Technology helps drive innovation, and yet 70 percent to 90 percent of companies don't use IT in this way. What's holding them back? The biggest obstacle to IT performance is complexity. You wouldn't buy a car in parts and put it together yourself, yet that's what customers do with IT. The fragmented nature of the IT industry has traditionally meant that organizations depend on custom assembly. These custom systems end up as fragmented IT environments and application silos that companies struggle to keep running smoothly. The more complex the IT environment is, the less room there is for innovation. It's no wonder IT has a hard time keeping up with changing business needs. Managing complex IT environments also consumes resources that could otherwise be used to exploit new technology advances. Consider the impact of mobile computing on IT complexity. Employees have come to expect anytime, anywhere access to applications on their personal devices. And as the nature of work evolves, employees need a broader set of tools. "Big data" adds another layer of complexity, combining data from blogs, social media, e-mail, and sensors with traditional data, all of which needs to be analyzed. And niche cloud solutions perpetuate application silos—this time in the cloud. IT complexity also affects how much companies spend on maintaining what they have instead of adding new capabilities. The smallest percentage of IT budgets is spent on major business transformation, new products and services, or business models. But what if you could change that? Even a modest shift in IT spending toward growing or transforming the business could help your business compete better in a complex marketplace. Oracle's strategy has always been to <em>simplify</em> IT so customers can use technology for business innovation, not just for business as usual. Oracle is simplifying IT by engineering hardware and software to work together—upending the long-standing industry practice of cobbling together a variety of different components. See the next slide show to learn more.</strong>