Thoughts from Oracle CloudWorld Tour London

It won't surprise you that I'm going to talk about AI. It was the hot topic of Oracle CloudWorld (OCW) Tour, London. Of particular interest to me was the AI Agent Studio announced on the day of the London event, 20th March. 

Rather than just read the announcement, I suggest that you watch this short video from Bob Evans where he discusses the AI Agent Studio with Steve Miranda. Bob has a great ability to get points over easily and make them stick. 

What I really want to talk about is the general narrative around AI in Fusion Apps.

There was a partner call the week before the event, when Steve Miranda shared his strategy and hinted at this upcoming announcement. Steve also said the conversations around AI he’s now having with Apps Unlimited customers are getting them excited in a way they haven't been previously. As I said in my recent webinar on AI in EBS; I think this could be the tipping point.

The day before the main London event, Oracle kicked off with the partner summit and Chris Leone again hinted at what he’d be announcing in the keynote. He built up the excitement, and when the announcement came—the ability to extend and orchestrate agents in your system at no additional cost—he did not disappoint. Here again is continuous innovation delivered by Oracle

As I talked to many people—customers, Oracle and other partners—everyone was discussing the announcement. I did hear some feedback from a couple of people that they felt things had been repeated in every session. So while they enjoyed each of them, the first ten minutes was the same message and the same slides.

I think this is just where we are in the AI cycle—you need to set the scene and ensure everyone is on the same page about the different types of AI and how they’ve evolved.The pace is so fast that you can easily miss an announcement, and your thinking remains where you last heard about it.

I’ve been using the Oracle slide above to set the scene between Classic and Gen AI but now I think my favorite Oracle AI slide of the moment will be this one:

Despite what I think, OCW was not just about applications. Oracle is the whole stack. I attended the keynotes where, as you would expect, we heard about the latest AI in all the Oracle offerings. 

It was impressive that Oracle UK had Baroness Jones, minister for the Future Digital Economy, on stage talking about how AI, and specifically Oracle, can help the country grow and support the UK Government deliver on its vision for AI innovation and adoption. This was the theme of another recent announcement where Oracle is investing £5 billion in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) in the UK.  

Everything delivered in Apps is built on OCI, but Oracle have embedded it for us and for free, and now we can link or extend them to address our needs. 

I later attended an over-subscribed hands-on-lab and switched on AI and played with it in a demo system. Not my first time obviously, but switching it on isn’t the difficult bit. It’s knowing which bit makes sense for you, for your organization. 

The day after OCW, we had a Human Capital Management (HCM) Strategy partner day led by Yvette Cameron, and there was an open discussion on AI adoption.

Nothing I heard changes my mantra that adoption should be challenge lead and not just ‘what can you do with this shiny new tool?' But equally many customers are coming to us with a ‘we need to adopt AI’ approach, as if there is a single switch. You still need to drive adoption.

We also discussed governance. Your organization will have an AI strategy and that will include approvals to use it. Oracle will pass any bar set, but you need to address them. Then, which of the over 150 innovations added in the last 12 months makes sense for you?

These are conversations I love to have and if it resonates with you, reach out and let's have a chat.

So a busy few days, and the pace doesn't slow down. By the global Oracle CloudWorld in October, there will be new things to hear about and customer stories about how Oracle brings those promised benefits. 

Debra originally published this at https://debrasoracle.blogspot.com/2025/03/my-thoughts-about-oracle-cloudworld.html