We had the opportunity to attend Oracle’s OpenWorld mega event a few weeks ago, a busy fall schedule has not allowed us to sum up the key findings, though we posted them on YouTube (see here) and Slideshare (see here) right away. Let’s look at the HCM side of the Oracle offering. As usual the HCM sessions were held at the Palace Hotel, off from Moscone, and for the first time, the number of users attending outnumbered the number of prospects.
Tough to pick the top 3 takeaways – but here you go:
Oracle HCM is … growing fast – Chris Leone walked through the first 6 years of Oracle HCM, and what was humble beginnings back in 2010 (20 Global HR customers, 30 Talent customers), has developed over the last 6 years into what is now one of the large, if not the largest part of the worldwide HCM market share for SaaS based HCM (with 6000+ HCM Cloud customers, 1300+ Global HR customers (800 live), and 2000+ Talent Acquisition customers. Over 100+ go lives pro quarter and 15M+ HCM employees are other indicators that the substantial investment (about 2500 employees in products – excluding Peoplesoft) is paying off for Oracle. With an equally substantial sales and marketing investment – the next 12 months will have to show if Oracle can move out of the Top 3 in the HCM market, and become a clear leader in customer adoption. For now, you can still slice and dice the Top 3 (including SAP and Workday) as they please.
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| Oracle HCM Market Momentum |
New Talent Acquisition in the works – For the longest time Oracle HCM product leadership has shied away from touching the old Taleo functionality. Along the lines ‘the world doesn’t need another / a new recruiting’ product, Oracle provided integration and worked around the regular beat from Workday on the ‘single’ platform, the power of one etc. And one can make the point that in the SaaS world integration is the vendor’s challenge, not the customers, but the concern on integration risk, cost and overall speed of innovation will always be brought up. So the really big news from OpenWorld is, that Oracle is building new Talent Acquisition capabilities, with a focus on functionality for customers using the suite first. This is big news as it takes out the ‘Jockey Club’ that Taleo was for Oracle HCM. Anyone who does not know, visit Las Vegas and watch from the Bellagio hotel toward the Cosmopolitan – you get it. Obviously Oracle has not shared much more details, I’d expect to learn more at next year’s HCM World. But truly an important step to bring together all of HCM automation for Oracle customers and prospects.
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| Oracle HCM Footprint |
Adaptive Intelligence – for HCM - We are in the fall of AI where no conference cannot have a stab at Artificial Intelligence, Oracle has been no exception announcing its suite of Adaptive Intelligence applications, one of them being in HCM. Not surprisingly the functional content of the HCM adaptive intelligence application will be on …. Talent Acquisition. And that all makes sense, when you rebuild your Talent Acquisition capabilities (see above) – you want to give customers a reason to move, and build on the latest and greatest capabilities…. So for a 2017 product that need to have an AI / ML play. But its early days for all of Adaptive Intelligence, for now Oracle is ‘just’ rounding up what it had in its portfolio from the Datalogix et al acquisitions (see the take of my colleague Doug Henschen here) and coming out of the gate with that. The HCM Adaptive Intelligence application is coming later, in 2017.
MyPOV
A very quiet OpenWorld from the HCM team, the strategy reminds me of Teddy Roosevelt’s ‘speak softly and carry a big stick’ – in the sense of not making big announcements, but building big things. Very un-Oracleish and maybe a first step of Oracle becoming a more gentle, friendly, easy to do business with Oracle. That will be a substantial change in DNA, but given the investment Oracle is doing in R&D in general and in HCM in specific, a little change. Starting in HCM, given the tender nature of relations in the industry is certainly a good first step. But overall kudos to Oracle to start addressing the multi-year ‘elephant (named Taleo) in the room’, adding an AI wrinkle with ‘Adaptive Intelligence’ – so it will be interesting to learn more in 2017. Stay tuned.The Storify of the Hurd keynote can be found here - Ellison's is here, the Day 2 keynote can be found here. Don't miss the HCM Keynote Storify below, or here.
Recent blog posts on Oracle:
Future of Work / HCM / SaaS research:
Also worth a look for the full picture
- First Take - Early Oracle OpenWorld 2016 Keynotes - read here
- Event Preview - Oracle OpenWorld 2016 - What to expect, what to watch for ... will IaaS start Clicking? - read here
- Market Move - Oracle acquires NetSuite - Oddly consolidation means more options for customers - read here
- News Analysis - Oracle Unveils Suite of Breakthrough Services.. or short: Oracle Cloud Machine - read here
- Progress Report - Oracle Cloud - More ready than ever, now needs adoption - read here
- Event Report - Oracle Openworld 2015 - Top 3 Takeaways, Top 3 Positives & Concerns - read here
- News Analysis - Quick Take on all 22 press releases of Oracle OpenWorld Day #1 - #3 - read here
- First Take - Oracle OpenWorld - Day 1 Keynote - Top 3 Takeaways - read here
- Event Preview - Oracle Openworld - watch here
Future of Work / HCM / SaaS research:
- Event Report - Oracle HCM World - Innovation around the Core - read here
- Event Report - Oracle HCM World - Full Steam ahead, a Learning surprise and potential growth challenges - read here
- First Take - Oracle HCM World Day #1 Keynote - off to a good start - read here
- Progress Report - Oracle HCM gathers momentum - now it needs to build on that - read here
- Oracle pushes modern HR - there is more than technology - read here. (Takeaways from the recent HCMWorld conference).
- Why Applications Unlimited is good a good strategy for Oracle customers and Oracle - read here.
Also worth a look for the full picture
- Event Report - Oracle PaaS Event - 6 PaaS Services become available, many more announced - read here
- Progress Report - Oracle Cloud makes progress - but key work remains in the cellar - read here
- News Analysis - Oracle discovers the power of the two socket server - or: A pivot that wasn't one - TCO still rules - read here
- Market Move - Oracle buys Datalogix - moves more into DaaS - read here
- Event Report - Oracle Openworld - Oracle's vision and remaining work become clear - they are both big - read here
- Constellation Research Video Takeaways of Oracle Openworld 2014 - watch here
- Is it all coming together for Oracle in 2014? Read here.
- From the fences - Oracle AR Meeting takeaways - read here (this was the last analyst meeting in spring 2013)
- Takeaways from Oracle CloudWorld LA - read here (this was one of the first cloud world events overall, in January 2013)
And if you want to read more of my findings on Oracle technology - I suggest:
- Progress Report - Good cloud progress at Oracle and a two step program - read here.
- Oracle integrates products to create its Foundation for Cloud Applications - read here.
- Java grows up to the enterprise - read here.
- 1st take - Oracle in memory option for its database - very organic - read here.
- Oracle 12c makes the database elastic - read here.
- How the cloud can make the unlikeliest bedfellows - read here.
- Act I - Oracle and Microsoft partner for the cloud - read here.
- Act II - The cloud changes everything - Oracle and Salesforce.com - read here.
- Act III - The cloud changes everything - Oracle and Netsuite with a touch of Deloitte - read here.
Want to learn more? Checkout the Storify collection below (if it doesn’t show up – check here). Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.
