It’s long been acknowledged that information is power, but the cloud combined with AI offers organisations – in particular the enterprise – more opportunity than before to really extract value and drive success.

Indeed, by 2025 all cloud apps will incorporate AI in one form or another.

So claims Oracle CEO Mark Hurd who used his keynote session at the firm’s OpenWorld conference in San Francisco this week to highlight myriad of benefits on offer when the two are combined.

Proclaiming that “Cyber teams are the new future,” Hurd added “As cloud and integrated technologies like AI [evolve] information becomes incrementally more valuable.”

Hurd stressed to delegates that cloud was now a foundational aspect of business; something “irrefutable.” What’s more, Hurd also believes spicing up the cloud mix with additional ingredients such as AI will only serve to help accelerate the pace at which organisations embrace what cloud has to offer.

“The cloud market is accelerating, it’s moving faster than predicted. Just last year alone 15% of US corporate owned data centres shut down. If you run that out and it was linear, the prediction I made of [it happening by] 2025, would be off by three or four years,” Hurd said.

“Cloud is accelerating and those datacentres are shifting from companies to core cloud providers. [But] we don’t see AI as an individual solution. There are many vendors that do. We see AI as a core feature that will get embedded into every solution, every application.”

Hurd added that the advent of AI brought with it enhanced productivity and innovation potential, reducing the time it takes humans to do certain tasks today or simply being able to do things humans just cannot fathom.

“Customers are [already] using cloud and now you’re going to see a new era as we integrate AI,” Hurd added.

Oracle has gone to great lengths to shore up its cloud defenses so that customers can have greater confidence that their most prized asset – data – is truly secure.

So claims chairman and CTO Larry Ellison who used his opening keynote at the firm’s OpenWorld conference in San Francisco today to update delegates on what it has done to ensure it’s cloud offering is fighting fit.

Using terminology more commonly found in Hollywood film scripts, Ellison talked about Star Wars-like defence that will not surrender to threats old, new and not-yet-discovered.

“Oracle has gone through a period of fundamentally re-architecting our cloud. It’s easy to say but very hard to do – to build a secure cloud. If it was easy to do, someone would have already done it!” Ellison said.

“[We have created] impenetrable barriers and autonomous robots that find those threats and kill them. It has to be robots. The way most people operate today is if a vulnerability is found in their database, apps or systems, human beings decide how to schedule a downtime window and patch it and, then,  find all the related systems and patch them too. It’s a bunch of people trying to defend your data against a robot or botnet attack. It’s your people against their robots. Who is faster? Who is going to win? It’s got to be automated.”

Oracle’s cloud makeover has been dubbed Gen 2 cloud and, according to Ellison, it is leaps and bounds over the current generation, which although good, has many downsides too. One of the main ones being the vulnerability of cloud control code that could be injected by one customer and spread like a virus onto other customers.

“With our Gen 2 cloud we have customer computers – we call them bare metal. But we will never put our cloud control code in the same computer that has customer code. That creates an incredible vulnerability to our cloud control system,” Ellison added.

“With Gen 2, threats can’t enter and threats can’t spread. It’s a big deal… I’m not talking about a few software changes here and there. We had to add a new network of dedicated independent computers to basically surround the perimeter of our cloud. These are computers you don’t find in other clouds. It not only keeps threats from getting in, these barriers also surround each individual customer zone in our cloud so spreads cannot spread from one customer area to another.

The firm’s second generation cloud has taken advantage of AI and machine learning to add sophisticated, robot-actioned defence levels. It features what Ellison termed ‘core-to-edge’ security and is based on 7 key tenets of threat detection, resolution and obliteration: Compliance, edge security, access security, an autonomous database, data security, network security, and isolation.

“We’ve been working on this for a very long time. We’ve been adding automation, adding automation, adding automation with every generation until we automated just about everything and then we became autonomous,” Ellison said.

“Automation is great because people typically build a data warehouse and tune it and later the tuning they did is obsolete. The Oracle autonomous database tunes itself and then retunes and retunes. The system constantly adapts to changing shapes of data and changing workloads.

“Because there is nothing to learn and nothing to do that makes it really easy to use. Here’s the manual and here’s the list to do. That’s it, training course over. If we eliminate human labour, we eliminate human error.”

Given the amount of effort that has gone into Gen 2, Ellison couldn’t resist taking a swipe at the completion. In this instance, the majority of his wrath was focused on Amazon.

Showing the audience a slide with all manner of AWS-bashing stats, Ellison said Oracle’s data warehouse was nine times faster and eight time cheaper than Amazon Redshift. Furthermore, he claimed Oracle’s autonomous transaction processing was 11 times faster and eight times cheaper than Amazon’s Aurora.

“We believe it should cost the same to move data in and out. Amazon’s pricing is very clear. Move data in, you’re done,” he quipped, adding that when it came to pricing the company guaranteed to cut customers’ bills from competitors in half.

“I read an article that said that white Oracle may have an autonomous database, Amazon is developing a semi-autonomous database. A semi-autonomous database is like driving a semi- autonomous car – You get in, you drive and you die!” Ellison added.

Oracle has gone to great lengths to shore up its cloud defenses so that customers can have greater confidence that their most prized asset – data – is truly secure.

So claims chairman and CTO Larry Ellison who used his opening keynote at the firm’s OpenWorld conference in San Francisco today to update delegates on what it has done to ensure it’s cloud offering is fighting fit.

Using terminology more commonly found in Hollywood film scripts, Ellison talked about Star Wars-like defence that will not surrender to threats old, new and not-yet-discovered.

“Oracle has gone through a period of fundamentally re-architecting our cloud. It’s easy to say but very hard to do – to build a secure cloud. If it was easy to do, someone would have already done it!” Ellison said.

“[We have created] impenetrable barriers and autonomous robots that find those threats and kill them. It has to be robots. The way most people operate today is if a vulnerability is found in their database, apps or systems, human beings decide how to schedule a downtime window and patch it and, then,  find all the related systems and patch them too. It’s a bunch of people trying to defend your data against a robot or botnet attack. It’s your people against their robots. Who is faster? Who is going to win? It’s got to be automated.”

Oracle’s cloud makeover has been dubbed Gen 2 cloud and, according to Ellison, it is leaps and bounds over the current generation, which although good, has many downsides too. One of the main ones being the vulnerability of cloud control code that could be injected by one customer and spread like a virus onto other customers.

“With our Gen 2 cloud we have customer computers – we call them bare metal. But we will never put our cloud control code in the same computer that has customer code. That creates an incredible vulnerability to our cloud control system,” Ellison added.

“With Gen 2, threats can’t enter and threats can’t spread. It’s a big deal… I’m not talking about a few software changes here and there. We had to add a new network of dedicated independent computers to basically surround the perimeter of our cloud. These are computers you don’t find in other clouds. It not only keeps threats from getting in, these barriers also surround each individual customer zone in our cloud so spreads cannot spread from one customer area to another.

The firm’s second generation cloud has taken advantage of AI and machine learning to add sophisticated, robot-actioned defence levels. It features what Ellison termed ‘core-to-edge’ security and is based on 7 key tenets of threat detection, resolution and obliteration: Compliance, edge security, access security, an autonomous database, data security, network security, and isolation.

“We’ve been working on this for a very long time. We’ve been adding automation, adding automation, adding automation with every generation until we automated just about everything and then we became autonomous,” Ellison said.

“Automation is great because people typically build a data warehouse and tune it and later the tuning they did is obsolete. The Oracle autonomous database tunes itself and then retunes and retunes. The system constantly adapts to changing shapes of data and changing workloads.

“Because there is nothing to learn and nothing to do that makes it really easy to use. Here’s the manual and here’s the list to do. That’s it, training course over. If we eliminate human labour, we eliminate human error.”

Given the amount of effort that has gone into Gen 2, Ellison couldn’t resist taking a swipe at the completion. In this instance, the majority of his wrath was focused on Amazon.

Showing the audience a slide with all manner of AWS-bashing stats, Ellison said Oracle’s data warehouse was nine times faster and eight time cheaper than Amazon Redshift. Furthermore, he claimed Oracle’s autonomous transaction processing was 11 times faster and eight times cheaper than Amazon’s Aurora.

“We believe it should cost the same to move data in and out. Amazon’s pricing is very clear. Move data in, you’re done,” he quipped, adding that when it came to pricing the company guaranteed to cut customers’ bills from competitors in half.

“I read an article that said that white Oracle may have an autonomous database, Amazon is developing a semi-autonomous database. A semi-autonomous database is like driving a semi- autonomous car – You get in, you drive and you die!” Ellison added.

San Francisco. Same city, different big tech conference. This time, the city is playing host to Oracle’s big annual conference OpenWorld (or OOW as it is also known).

Larry Ellison’s keynote isn’t until Monday afternoon (he’s also doing another keynote to end the show too), but there’s plenty to keep attendees occupied before and after the main event. Indeed, this year’s OOW boasts more than 2,000 sessions from the same number of customers.

Some 60,000 delegates are expended to descend on the Moscone conference centre (with another 19 million watching the various live streams), while hundreds of partners will showcase their wares and network with existing and potential customers alike.

”Oracle OpenWorld 2018 delivers a world-class conference experience that immerses attendees in the future of cloud, artificial intelligence, and other emerging technologies,“ said Tania Weidick, Oracle‘s vice president of event marketing.

She added: ”Everything about the event – from creative programming to luminary speakers – is designed to promote new ideas and collaboration, as well as best position our customers and partners for success. This year’s event will continue our 20-plus year legacy in San Francisco, contributing $195 million in positive economic impact to the city.”

This year’s event will build on a truth universally acknowledged – that cloud is here, understood and being implemented. We’ve, rightly, moved away from questions such as ‘What is cloud?’ and  ‘Is the cloud secure?’ And instead are focused on how to really get value from the cloud and where things are headed next.

There will also be a focus on how AI and machine learning can fuel innovation and help drive success, as well as how autonomy and automation are shaping and changing the world around us and the way we live and work.

Security considerations won’t be ignored, with the conference aiming to discuss and debate where the next big security threat or threats are likely to stem from and work out how to prepare and defend against them.

To that end, CEO Mark Hurd will lead the security agenda, which will also see a stellar cast of experts adding their thoughts on the matter, including discuss the Michae Hayden, former director of the CIA and the NSA, former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, and Sir John Scarlett, former chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service.

Outside of discussions around themes, there will obviously be the usual product announcements and an update on some of last year’s key launches.

Ultimately, the overriding message seems to be that of business transformation and how to empower employees and customers alike. But, although this conference is a technology one, it appears that Oracle recognises that IT is but one ingredient in the recipe to sustainable success.

“It comes down to [the fact that] employees or customers don’t care what the technology is. They care about the user experience. And everything we’re trying to do is to get to that in a seamless fashion,” said Steve Miranda, executive vice president of Oracle Applications product development, on the first day of OOW.

The event is designed for “attendees who want to connect, learn, explore and be inspired,” according to Oracle. Stay tuned for my coverage throughout the week to see if this vision becomes reality.

San Francisco. Same city, different big tech conference. This time, the city is playing host to Oracle’s big annual conference OpenWorld (or OOW as it is also known).

Larry Ellison’s keynote isn’t until Monday afternoon, but there’s plenty to keep attendees occupied before and after the main event. Indeed, this year’s OOW boasts more than 2,000 sessions from the same number of customers. Tens of thousands of delegates are expended to descend on the Moscone conference centre (with millions watching the various live streams), while hundreds of partners will showcase their wares and network with existing and potential customers alike.

This year’s event will build on a truth universally acknowledged – that cloud is here, understood and being implemented. We’ve, rightly, moved away from questions such as ‘What is cloud?’ and  ‘Is the cloud secure?’ And instead are focused on how to really get value from the cloud and where things are headed next.

There will also be a focus on how AI and machine learning can fuel innovation and help drive success, as well as how autonomy and automation are shaping and changing the world around us and the way we live and work.

Security considerations won’t be ignored, with the conference aiming to discuss and debate where the next big security threat or threats are likely to stem from and work out how to prepare and defend against them.

Outside of discussions around themes, there will obviously be the usual product announcements and an update on some of last year’s key launches.

Ultimately, the overriding message seems to be that of business transformation and how to empower employees and customers alike. But, although this conference is a technology one, it appears that Oracle recognises that IT is but one ingredient in the recipe to sustainable success.

‘It comes down to [the fact that] employees or customers don’t care what the technology is. They care about the user experience. And everything we’re trying to do is to get to that in a seamless fashion,” said Steve Miranda, executive vice president of Oracle Applications product development, on the first day of OOW.

The event is designed for “attendees who want to connect, learn, explore and be inspired,” according to Oracle. Stay tuned for my coverage throughout the week to see if this vision becomes reality.

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are struggling in the face of growing challenges that are, in some cases, being made much more complex by the cloud rather than simplified.

So claims Datto CEO Austin McChord, who talked about how increasingly challenging the small business landscape has become and is becoming, while speaking at the firm’s Dattocon event in Austin, Texas this week.

Given such a backdrop, SMBs will increasingly turn to managed service providers (MSPs) to provide the added layers of expertise and proficiency they either lack or can’t afford to recruit internally.

“Small businesses are facing challenges. Whether it’s regulation, security or the fact that moving to the cloud makes things more complex not simpler. Many of these small businesses don’t have the knowledge or expertise to navigate this landscape,” McChord said.

“The opportunity is massive. More than $40bn runs through small businesses. And up to 50% of this touches MSPs. By 2022m it’s expected to be north of $72bn.”

Datto announced a series of enhancements to its solution set – both on the products MSPs service SMBs with as well as the PSA tools providers, many of which who are SMBs themselves, use to run their business.

It also made good on promises made at the last Dattocon event and also post news of the Vista Equity Partners acquisition and merger with Autotask. In particular, it pledged to continue to better help support partners so they can, in turn, better serve the varying needs of their own customers.

Choice seemed to be the watchword, and that led onto a commitment of greater openness and integration with companies such as Connectwise.

Mark Banfield, Datto’s senior vice president of international, echoed the need for MSPs to support SMBs as they navigate a maze of complexity and uncertainty.

“Certain markets in the UK are dominated by SMBs. Germany, Italy etc are the same. UK MSPs will be the engine to deliver IT services to the SMB market. With such complexity, they need MSPs more than ever.”

Salesforce has announced plans to expand its UK datacentre footprint without increasing its carbon footprint, claiming its second UK facility will run on 100% renewable energy. 

The new datacentre will open for business in 2019, Andrew Lawson, Salesforce’s executive vice president and UK general manager, confirmed this week.

«I’m proud to announce our expansion in our datacentre capacity. We’re in the process of commissioning and finalising our second UK datacentre and that will make a big difference moving forward,» he said. 

“The opening of our first European Innovation Centre at Salesforce Tower London [this week] and our increased datacentre capacity in the UK underscores both our partnership with UK businesses and our growth in this market,” Lawson added.

“These facilities will help our trailblazing customers and partners to drive innovation and connect with their customers in a whole new way.”

Sustainability remains a key focus for the cloud CRM giant, with it achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in 2017 as well as starting to offer a carbon-neutral cloud for its customers.

The new datacentre will play a big role in supporting Salesforce’s growing UK business, both on the customer and partner side, according to Simon Mulcahy, Salesforce’s global CMO.

“International is our most important growth environment. Within that it’s EMEA and within that, the UK is prime. The growth here is amazing and we have incredible strategic partners such as Ulster Bank and RBS,” he said during a press Q&A at the company’s World Tour London conference.

Such is the momentum in the UK, it’s actually the second biggest Salesforce conference worldwide, with the biggest being the annual Dreamforce event in San Francisco, Mulcahy added.