Ascend 2021 was a big hit, combining OATUG and OHUG in an event which included both in-person and virtual attendees. Many customers, sponsors, and exhibitors have been eager to engage after the pandemic eliminated the in-person element of conferences for the better part of the last two years. Although Flexagon decided to forgo the on-site exhibition, we participated virtually and found many people willing engage.
Here are a few highlights we took away from Ascend:
EBS and PeopleSoft Continue to be a Strategic Investment
EBS and PeopleSoft continue to be strategic for many Customers, Partners, and Oracle. The investment in these mature products has been obvious over the past few decades, underpinning many customers around the world to run their private and public sector businesses. Given the wealth of investment and value these applications provides, many customers are choosing to continue using them and extending their value by leveraging the ongoing investments Oracle is making to enhance and support the products.
Oracle Applications, Middleware, Database moving to OCI
Many customers are choosing to leverage their investments and move EBS, PeopleSoft, Database, Middleware, and Business Intelligence to the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. There were many Customer, Partner, and Oracle sessions describing the success of shifting to run these existing products on the cloud infrastructure, including the advantages of running on Oracle vs. other cloud infrastructure providers.
Oracle Cloud SaaS is Thriving
At this point, Oracle Cloud SaaS is common place and in many cases part of a multi-cloud strategy. Oracle SaaS is being adopted by many customers and in many cases it is part of a multi-cloud strategy which might include other non-Oracle SaaS apps and existing Oracle and non-Oracle technologies running on-prem and in the cloud. Oracle, Partners, and Customers talked about extending the Oracle Cloud SaaS apps using technologies such as the Oracle Integration Cloud, Digital Assistance, cloud native application development, etc. Oracle clearly stated their interest and ability to work in multi-vendor cloud architectures including Microsoft Azure, Amazon, and Google.
Oracle Cloud PaaS Isn’t Far Behind
Cloud PaaS is being adopted by many customers moving to Oracle Cloud. We heard many customers talk about their adoption of the Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) to extend SaaS Apps. In quite a few cases, OIC was used in combination with customers existing investment in Oracle Fusion Middleware such as SOA and OSB.
DevOps is Top of Mind
Surprise, Surprise… DevOps was on the minds of many customers and partners. And so was automation in general. The discussions were in the context of all ‘layers’ of technology including infrastructure, database, middleware, applications, and business intelligence.
There were multiple DevOps and Automation sessions, including one by Brett Barnhart from Sonoco who discussed their DevOps journey and the use of FlexDeploy. A big shout out to Brett Barnhart for the praises he gave to FlexDeploy and the benefits it is helping Sonoco achieve.
Have other major takeaways from Ascend, or comments on what we heard? Please leave them in the comments.