Dubai: Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence aren’t the enemy of jobs and the new technologies actually end up creating different, higher-paying jobs than the ones they replace, said the president of Oracle product development.
Thomas Kurian said that automation is certainly not about replacing employees with machines. Rather, it’s about speeding up tasks that take more time than businesses can afford to give to them as they seek to innovate at pace and achieve greater profitability through efficiency and by enabling people to focus on more valuable tasks.
“It is about improving the decision-making capabilities of people by arming them with a richness of highly relevant, topical and timely data that otherwise would not be possible to collect,” he said.
For example, he said in an HR function, processes such as uploading job descriptions, screening applicant resumes, and filling out compliance forms take time away from doing truly value-added functions, such as helping employees reorient their careers, or helping executives become better managers.
Meanwhile, intelligent applications within HR systems can automate some of those more mundane chores and help HR staff realise more of their own potential. Far from taking over HR jobs, AI and other emerging technologies enable HR professionals to redefine their roles and to refocus their efforts on more strategic matters that machines simply can’t handle, he said.
Oracle is the fastest growing cloud company at scale, he said and added that the company has built something that its competitors can’t, so our customers could do things they’ve never been able to do before.
“We have built a cloud that delivers everything as a service and delivers the freedom to pursue real change and innovation across the entire organisation. We give customers the ability to design their own map to cloud success — not just one map, not just our map, but almost limitless paths and roadways they can draw, then shape, then redraw again in new, powerful ways as their businesses grow,” he said.
Unlike other cloud vendors, Oracle offers a complete range of services in all three primary layers of the cloud: Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
“We built a cloud future that’s less about restrictions and more about re-imagining people, processes, and progress. The journey to the cloud isn’t a one-way path — and each company’s journey is unique,” Kurian said.
Research firm International Data Corporation estimates that public cloud spending in Middle East Turkey and Africa region will reach $715 million in 2017.
When asked how important the UAE is in the global scheme of things for Oracle, he said that the UAE is a priority market for Oracle and the country is witnessing a rapid adoption of Oracle Cloud.
“There is no doubt that Oracle will lead the UAE and Middle East’s cloud revolution.
Oracle has been operating in the UAE for more than 30 years and during this period we have constantly invested in expanding our resources, infrastructure and offering our latest solutions,” he said.
Oracle is also setting up a data centre in Abu Dhabi which is expected to be opened early next year.
He said that the data centre will feature Oracle’s Engineered Systems — which combine highly tuned hardware, software, and networking for top performance — to support the increasing demands of area customers who tap Oracle’s wide range of cloud services.
By locating a data centre in the UAE, he said that Oracle will be better able to manage service levels and respond to local customers who, for a variety of reasons including data governance requirements, need their data to be in close geographic proximity.
In January, Oracle opened an Oracle Digital Hub in Dubai to advance cloud growth and provide support to Oracle customers and partners in the UAE and wider Middle East region.
“We hired 400 cloud sales professionals for the Digital Hub in Dubai and we are now in the process of hiring another 1000 cloud sales professionals from across the EMEA region to support the growth of our cloud computing business in the region,” he said.
