Change is sweeping Australian cloud users: Oracle

As organisations move towards cloud services they tend to start looking at things differently, and often that involves embracing new ways of innovating around how to provide a better experience or to better understand customers, according to Oracle Australia and New Zealand regional managing director Rob Willis.

"What I have seen is that in some companies you get some very creative people and those people stand out -- they really are leading lights in a way. They have a way of looking at the problem and come at it from different angles by finding new and innovative solutions," Willis told ZDNet.

"We see people adopting new things and that's great but along the way you find people attacking things in really creative ways and that's probably the most rewarding part of it because these people do add a lot of value to the business they are part of.

"It's great when you find someone doing something new that's really working for them."

In his six months with the company, Willis said one thing he has consistently come across when visiting his Australian customers is the amount of change organisations are putting themselves through.

"Whether it's in very large organisations or in small ones, that common theme is that they're seeing a lot of change in requirements from their customers or they're seeing a lot of change in the way that they need to do things," he explained.

"A good example is in the retail area and selling through stores. That space is changing rapidly and they are all looking at ways of doing things differently and more efficiently, more effectively to have a better customer relationship. I see that across all different sized companies and across all cities in Australia, it's definitely a common theme."

Willis said generally speaking, organisations are adopting cloud services quite rapidly, even mirroring more advanced economies in that regard.

"They see a lot of value in it and every company that I talk to, all of our customers, they're all interested in what their journey is going to be to moving to the cloud and using more services from the cloud," he said.

He said it often just comes down to how easily an organisation can move, given its existing technology environment and current requirements, rather than an unwillingness to send service hosting elsewhere.

In February, Oracle expanded its cloud coverage in Australia with the launch of Oracle Cloud Platform services and a new datacentre in Sydney.

While Oracle has offered software-as-a-service across finance, HR, and marketing out of Australia since 2012, the expansion saw the addition of Oracle's platform and infrastructure services.

"To be honest, we would have liked it to be earlier, but what's prompted it is that we see a rapidly growing market in Australia," he said. "Our customers are asking for these services and we know that this is something they are very interested in."

Since February, Willis explained that everything is up and running, with customers already migrating over to the datacentre and turning services on.

"There's a range of infrastructure and platform services available now and we will be adding more and more services to datacentre every few months over the next six to 12 months," he explained.

Oracle has doubled the number of facilities it has around the world in recent years, with Willis explaining the company's cloud footprint is rapidly growing across infrastructure, platform, and software. He said the further expansion into the Australia and New Zealand region is recognition that customers want those services here, as well.