Last month, Oracle announced a new Enterprise Communications Platform (ECP).
The platform serves up SaaS-based communication, network, and IoT solutions to customers so they can innovate within their Oracle environments.
By that description, it’s essentially a CPaaS platform. And, as the saying goes, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it probably is a duck.
Yet, don’t expect Oracle to go to market with the ECP as a standalone offering and compete directly against Twilio, Vonage, and Webex for CPaaS contract wins.
Instead, the solution will likely target Oracle customers who wish to customize their cloud or add cloud capabilities to their on-premise deployments.
Liz Miller, VP & Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, noted this during a recent BIG CX News Update and highlighted how the move meets the needs of many current Oracle customers. She said:
What Oracle is providing their customers is the capacity to build what is needed as opposed to building what Oracle built.
“I think that’s indicative of Oracle’s new kind of mantra moving into that cloud, that hyper-scaler world, where they want things to be far more flexible,” she continued.
“But, they want it to fit back into where their customers stand today from within their cloud and cloud infrastructure.”
That’s crucial, as today’s Oracle customers are unlikely to leverage just one element of its portfolio. Instead, these brands will likely run their finance, supply chain, HR, and various other functions on Oracle’s infrastructure.
The ECP helps pull these elements together so they can talk to one another and share data, enabling new possibilities for customization and innovation.
A Mindset Shift at Oracle?
As Miller suggests, the ECP announcement perhaps highlights Oracle’s recognition that shifting to the cloud has not necessarily proven easy for many businesses.
That seems especially true across industries with deep desire and demand for customization around their ERP, supply chain, and CX implementations.
For years, enterprises across such sectors have customized their on-premise platforms to drive innovation and efficiencies – creating a complex patchwork of systems.
Now, in the cloud era, that complexity is making migrations tiresome.
According to Miller, Oracle is doubling down on its industry strategy to combat this issue. She said:
They are going out and saying, “No, no, no. What are the customizations that, in our legacy business, everyone has needed? And how do we just make that available out of the box? Because we understand what our customers need.”
“I think that’s really refreshing to hear from Oracle because, let’s be honest, they haven’t had a reputation for being necessarily customer-first-minded. It has always been: We’ve innovated. You should be grateful that we innovated.”
In line with this trend, Oracle has ramped up innovation across its industry applications and developed new partnerships for sector-specific use cases.
From a CX perspective, one of the most eye-catching is its recent work with Zoom in healthcare. The collaboration aims to enhance remote patient appointment connectivity and access to relevant patient electronic health records (EHR).
However, this is just one of many examples. Expect many more similar partnerships to come in the near future.
