A New Oracle And Microsoft Agreement Simplifies Cross-Cloud Computing

More than 80% of enterprises use a combination of Microsoft and Oracle to run their business. As organizations look to move those computing workloads out of their own data centers and into the cloud, or to build new cloud-native applications, they naturally want to mix and match services from Oracle Cloud and Microsoft Azure to get the best fit for a given project or workload, without learning new skills, rewriting applications, or rearchitecting systems. A new Oracle and Microsoft agreement simplifies the elements needed to run such cross-cloud workloads, such as integrated authentication, high-speed data interconnects, and a unified security model.

One benefit to this agreement is when an organization runs interdependent application workloads, such as an inventory management application based on Microsoft that needs to work closely with a supply chain application based on Oracle. Today, such applications might run on adjacent server racks within a single corporate data center. In the cloud, the company may run the inventory application on Azure, while the supply chain application runs on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Compute and Oracle Exadata database in the Oracle Cloud—and those two applications still must talk to each other and share critical operating data about every transaction.

In other cases, an enterprise might have custom software written using .NET and Java running on Microsoft, while the back end uses the Oracle Database. Cross-cloud connectivity lets the business move the Microsoft parts from the data center into Azure, while migrating to Oracle Autonomous Database in Oracle Cloud. The cross-cloud connectivity agreement lets the business run the multicloud application fast, securely, and reliably.

As data analytics and machine learning become more important to today’s businesses, companies may want to run analytics and AI algorithms on applications and databases running across both Oracle and Microsoft cloud environments, to provide a larger pool of information to help drive business decisions.

“Customers have been investing in Oracle for decades and investing in Microsoft for decades,” says Don Johnson, executive vice president of Oracle Cloud. “Now that we have connected our clouds together, we are allowing customers to leverage all of their existing investment in skill sets and licenses to meet their cloud migration and business modernization goals.”

This interoperability agreement lets a company tap the best of each company’s cloud, including the rich Azure ecosystem and Oracle’s Exadata and Autonomous Database services. “Oracle Autonomous Database is the future, so the ability to connect to Autonomous Database from Azure is good for our customers,” Johnson says.

The new collaboration between Oracle and Microsoft greatly simplifies connection across their cloud environments, with high performance. The companies have established a high-throughput, low-latency link between Azure and Oracle Cloud by using predefined networking configurations for Oracle FastConnect and Azure ExpressRoute, which are the two companies’ services for dedicated, private connections between data centers and cloud services. No intermediary network provider will be required. And the data flowing between Azure and OCI can be isolated in a private overlay network; all the traffic is segmented and controlled via secured subnet.

Another new capability: for unified identity and access management, companies can federate on-premises Microsoft Active Directory with Azure Active Directory and Oracle Identity Cloud Service to enable a single identity source across both clouds, and a unified single sign-on experience for end users and applications.

Ensuring Ethical Practices With Oracle Blockchain Platform

Blockchain, the emerging distributed ledger technology, has the potential to transform the way businesses work, but it’s not a panacea for every organizational challenge. The key is understanding where it is more effective than other technologies.

One of those areas is for transactions that span multiple companies and where there’s a lack of visibility and trust among the entities, such as the participants in a supply chain, notes Bhagat Nainani, an Oracle group vice president whose work includes blockchain application development. “With a blockchain, you introduce that trust, because every transaction, every document, is on a shared ledger that is visible to everybody and is endorsed by the appropriate parties,” Nainani says.

London-based Circulor is at the center of such activity. Using Oracle Blockchain Platform, it’s helping companies ensure that the raw materials in their products are sourced ethically and in compliance with regulations by tracing materials through the entire supply chain, from their origin to the finished product.

Circulor started by focusing on a particularly challenging problem: tracking valuable “conflict minerals” (minerals extracted in a conflict zone and sold to perpetuate the fighting), such as gold, tantalum, and cobalt, from the mine to their eventual use in manufactured products such as smartphones and electric cars. Regulations require manufacturers to ensure that those minerals are legally extracted and aren’t sourced in countries that use child or slave labor. Manufacturers are also keen to demonstrate to consumers that their products are ethically and sustainably sourced.

The supply chains for conflict minerals involve multiple parties in various countries worldwide, notes Doug Johnson-Poensgen, Circulor’s CEO and cofounder. Take cobalt, which is in high demand for lithium-ion batteries used in electric cars. The ore may be mined and smelted in Africa, transported to a refinery in China, incorporated into cathodes in Vietnam, sent to a battery manufacturer in South Korea, and finally built into vehicles by a carmaker in the US or Europe.

No central authority governs the entire supply chain, so it’s not possible to require that all parties use a single tracking and compliance database, Johnson-Poensgen says. So Circulor uses blockchain to store an immutable record of the material’s path through the supply chain, together with smart contracts that apply consistent rules that each party must follow before it can pass the material to the next company in the chain, he says.

“Our target customers are big enterprises, and we have built an enterprise-class solution that is delivered as software as a service to those customers,” Johnson-Poensgen says. “We need to be able to demonstrate security, scalability, and availability out of the box—and that’s what we get with Oracle blockchain.” Circulor was able to develop a production system from scratch—spanning multiple companies—in a few months. “The engagement with Oracle has been amazing,” he adds.

First Application

Circulor’s first publicly announced application traces tantalum, a rare mineral integral to capacitors, which are used in millions of mobile devices and other electronic products. A smartphone typically contains hundreds of capacitors.

Circulor’s system went live in three mines and an ore-sorting facility in Rwanda in the fall of 2018, enabling manufacturers to track regulatory compliance and ethical practices more effectively than with stacks of paper attestations, while also reducing cost.

Rwanda is the world’s largest tantalum exporter. The problem is that the mineral could be smuggled in from neighboring Congo, where it’s often mined by children or slave labor. As a result, US and EU regulations require companies to trace and report the source of the tantalum they use and demonstrate that it has been responsibly sourced. But before blockchain, it wasn’t possible for them to create a foolproof traceability system, which led to a black market for the mineral.

Tracing conflict minerals is particularly challenging, because the raw materials are transformed into completely different products as they move along the supply chain. The material starts as an anonymous-looking bag of metal ore, but it changes form multiple times as it’s processed by the different companies in the chain. It may ultimately get incorporated into many different components.

This is a much more complex problem than, say, tracking a single head of lettuce from farm to supermarket shelf, Johnson-Poensgen notes. “That complexity is why it’s taken longer to deal with this challenge than with other track-and-trace applications,” he says. “We need to demonstrate an unbroken chain of custody on the journey from mine to manufacture and also to reliably connect the input material to the output product at each processing step.”

Verification at Every Step

To provide that assurance, Circulor’s blockchain application applies multiple verification methods at each step in the process. Those methods ensure that each company meets the rules of the smart contract required to pass the material to the next company in the supply chain.

At the mine, a smartphone app uses facial recognition technology to verify that the tantalum originates with a registered user. The phone’s GPS coordinates record the source, and other documentation methods, such as taking photos and using handheld mass spectrometers, provide additional verification. The system creates a QR code that identifies the source, which is attached to a tamper proof bag containing the ore, ready for scanning by the next company in the chain.

At each step in the supply chain, the tantalum is recorded and checked when it arrives and leaves. Companies can verify that the materials were scanned at the designated locations during their journey through the supply chain and that they were unloaded by authorized personnel. Different verification methods, including weighing and analyzing the material, may be used, depending on the stage in the supply chain, so that companies don’t need to radically change their existing procedures to improve traceability.

Now Circulor is expanding to other industries. It’s working with a major car manufacturer to trace the cobalt used in its lithium-ion batteries, and it’s launching into tracking other raw materials, such as rubber, wood, palm oil, and cotton.

What To Expect From Oracle and Microsoft Cloud Partnership

On June 5th, Microsoft and Oracle announced a partnership that bridges the gap between Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

Enterprise customers with investments in Microsoft and Oracle technology stacks can take advantage of the interoperability and integration by deploying applications that run across the two public cloud environments.

Here are a few scenarios that Microsoft and Oracle are enabling for customers.

Unmatched connectivity between OCI and Microsoft Azure

Both Microsoft and Oracle have invested in dedicated private networks to connect enterprise data centers with their respective cloud platforms. ExpressRoute on Azure and FastConnect on OCI rely on a set of partners that provide connectivity and network switching. A set of telecom, network, and co-location providers deliver high-speed connectivity between the cloud and the data center.

Through this partnership, Oracle became a service provider for ExpressRoute enabling direct connectivity to Azure. Customers don’t need to route the traffic through an intermediate service provider for establishing connectivity between Azure and OCI.

Initially available in Ashburn in US East Coast, customers can seamlessly connect Azure and OCI to mix and match workloads across the cloud environments. For example, a web application deployed in Azure can talk to an Oracle database running in OCI with almost no changes to the code.

With single-digit millisecond latencies, the cross-cloud connectivity agreement lets the business run the multi-cloud application fast, securely, and reliably. Customers can extend automation provided through native and 3rd party tools such as Terraform to automate provisioning and deployment across the clouds.

Unified identity and access management

Microsoft’s Active Directory (AD) is the most popular directory service used by enterprises. With Azure, Microsoft extended the power of AD to the cloud enabling single sign-on for line-of-business applications and web apps deployed in the cloud.

With the cross-cloud connectivity, Oracle customers can integrate access management based on Azure Active Directory through a federated identity model, which delivers a unified mechanism for authentication and authorizing users and applications.

Integrated and collaborative support model

Customers running workloads in the multi-cloud environment don’t need to deal with two support subscriptions. They can either call Oracle or Microsoft for support. This support model dramatically simplifies the complexity of managing applications running across cloud environments.

Microsoft and Oracle have jointly created a support team that is trained on the services offered by both cloud providers. With this, customers can leverage and extend their existing Microsoft Azure and OCI customer support relationships and processes.

Easy migration to the cloud

With simplified licensing models, customers can deploy enterprise Oracle applications on Azure with the same processor mapping as their existing on-premises deployments.

Enterprise apps such as Oracle E-Business Suite, JD Edwards, Peoplesoft Enterprise, Hyperion and Oracle Retail Applications can be migrated to Azure through simplified licensing schemes.

The same model is applied to Microsoft workloads, including SQL Server running on OCI.

Oracle has already certified a suite of applications, operating systems and databases for Microsoft Azure. With this partnership, additional Oracle workloads will become officially available on Azure.

Choosing the best of the breed deployment models

Microsoft has been investing in modern infrastructure based on containers and serverless architectures. Services such as Azure Container Instances, Durable Functions, Virtual Kubelet and Event Grid are examples of innovative and unique services available to Azure customers.

With this partnership, customers can run hyperscale applications on Azure while talking to the powerful Oracle database instances running in OCI. They can seamlessly integrate applications through streaming, eventing and triggers exclusively available in Azure.

OCI customers can also tap into the power of AI, IoT, Blockchain and edge services provided by Azure. Microsoft customers can take advantage of Oracle RAC, Exadata, and Autonomous Database deployed in OCI.

The road ahead

Apart from basic connectivity and interoperability, Microsoft and Oracle are committed to a tighter integration of Azure and OCI.

Some of the interesting possibilities include:

• Integration of Oracle Analytics Cloud and Azure Data Services
• Power BI integration with Oracle applications and Databases
• Integrated monitoring between Azure AppInsights and OCI Monitoring service
• Integrated key management between Azure KMS and OCI KMS
• Microsoft Teams integration with Oracle applications

The partnership between Microsoft and Oracle becomes industry's first real multi-cloud deal bringing together two mainstream public cloud environments - Azure and OCI. It is also an indicator of multi-cloud initiatives becoming essential and strategic to enterprises.

Three Important Things Smart DBAs Know About How Autonomous Database Will Affect Their Roles

With autonomous database technology becoming more ubiquitous, the role of the DBA is becoming more strategic. As the routine tasks of the Database Administrator, such as such as provisioning new databases, upgrading or patching existing databases, and making backups are being automated through artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), the DBA is being freed up to take on a more prominent role in developing new business initiatives. 

Previous posts on this blog, Re-tool Your Database Skills to Remain Relevant and Are Your DBA Tasks Changing? have provided an introduction to the changing role of the DBA, but this new ipaper, The Rise of the Strategic DBA offers a comprehensive look at at what five long-time database experts (names you are probably familiar with) have to say about how Oracle Autonomous Database is positively changing the way DBAs work and how they themselves are moving in the direction of automation. 

The innovations introduced in Oracle Autonomous Database help to simplify database management for DBAs while enabling them to advance their skills and expand their strategic role in the organization. Three important things for DBAs to keep in mind with this shift toward automation are outlined below.

1. Data is king.

Without data, there is no context. Data can help define and track important business trends and customer needs. Good quality data can help you stay ahead of your competition.

As DBAs are freed up from the more mundane tasks of database management, they are are able to help focus on extracting more value from the data being gathered. 

2. Get Your Head in the Cloud

Scalability alone makes the Cloud a great option for your database. Add to that, reduced cost and improved performance. The cloud-based capabilities of Autonomous Database makes moving to the could a necessity for the future of your data.

3. Your Role is Still Crucial

Though much of the routine maintenance is automated with Oracle Autonomous Database, there is sill an important role for the DBA.

• Defining the database architecture
• Creating data models
• Integrating new data sources
• Tuning business applications
• Managing security configurations
• Orchestrating a smooth transition to the cloud
• Keeping track of where the data resides, what it represents, and which users and applications can access it

Geoffrey Moore to Keynote Oracle Retail Cross Talk 2019

Oracle Retail announced today that Geoffrey Moore, Bestselling Author, Consultant and Disruptive Technology Specialist, will deliver the keynote address at Oracle Retail Cross Talk. The event brings together a global community of over 200 retail executives to share deep domain expertise and insights on technology that is core to their retail businesses. Cross Talk provides a unique and authentic networking forum where over 35 global retailers including Bata, Best Buy, the Estée Lauder companies, Kendra Scott, and more will share their success stories and lessons learned. The event will take place June 10-12, 2019 at the JW Marriott in Minneapolis, MN. 

“‘How can retailers succeed and thrive in a fast-paced and continually evolving business environment?’ Cross Talk focuses on collectively addressing this very question and enabling retailers to hear directly from their peers about how they are rising above today’s most pressing industry challenges to deliver results and delight customers,” said Mike Webster, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Retail.

Attendees will gain insight from talented retail executives representing the world’s leading brands including:

• Bata will discuss its digital transformation and how it is unlocking the business potential of omnichannel
• Best Buy will share critical insights into how it is optimizing supply chain strategies
• Estée Lauder will highlight its approach to delivering a seamless shopping experience
• International Shoppes will demonstrate how it is modernizing the customer experience
• Gap, Inc. will talk about its latest brand to go live with Oracle Retail cloud offerings
• James Avery will illustrate how it is upgrading the customer experience
• Kendra Scott will discuss how it built a platform for growth with cloud 
• Maui and Sons will share key learning as it rides the wave to operational agility
• Stein Mart will talk about its migration of planning to the cloud

Oracle PartnerNetwork members and strategic solution integrators are critical in helping deliver customer success. A number of key collaborators are sponsoring the show, including Accenture and Deloitte as platinum sponsors; gold sponsors BTM Retail and Retail Consult; and Aspire, CAI, Ignitiv, Logic, Quickborn, and SkillNet as silver sponsors. Solution level sponsors, Adyen and OneDoor, will also showcase their integrations into Oracle’s platform for modern retail.

“Our community is thrilled for the return of Oracle Retail Cross Talk,” said Rose Spicer, senior director of retail marketing, Oracle Corporation. “The response has been amazing and we cannot wait to assemble some of the biggest brands in the industry with new faces to discuss the issues and opportunities that are impacting them most today. We have also added some compelling networking elements to connect the retailers to one another.”

Microsoft and Oracle to Interconnect Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud

Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp. on Wednesday announced a cloud interoperability partnership enabling customers to migrate and run mission-critical enterprise workloads across Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud. Enterprises can now seamlessly connect Azure services, like Analytics and AI, to Oracle Cloud services, like Autonomous Database. By enabling customers to run one part of a workload within Azure and another part of the same workload within the Oracle Cloud, the partnership delivers a highly optimized, best-of-both-clouds experience. Taken together, Azure and Oracle Cloud offer customers a one-stop shop for all the cloud services and applications they need to run their entire business.

Connecting Azure and Oracle Cloud through network and identity interoperability makes lift-and-improve migrations seamless. This partnership delivers direct, fast and highly reliable network connectivity between two clouds, while continuing to provide first-class customer service and support that enterprises have come to expect from the two companies. In addition to providing interoperability for customers running Oracle software on Oracle Cloud and Microsoft software on Azure, it enables new and innovative scenarios like running Oracle E-Business Suite or Oracle JD Edwards on Azure against an Oracle Autonomous Database running on Exadata infrastructure in the Oracle Cloud.

“As the cloud of choice for the enterprise, with over 95% of the Fortune 500 using Azure, we have always been first and foremost focused on helping our customers thrive on their digital transformation journeys,” said Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Cloud and AI division. “With Oracle’s enterprise expertise, this alliance is a natural choice for us as we help our joint customers accelerate the migration of enterprise applications and databases to the public cloud.”

“The Oracle Cloud offers a complete suite of integrated applications for sales, service, marketing, human resources, finance, supply chain and manufacturing, plus highly automated and secure Generation 2 infrastructure featuring the Oracle Autonomous Database,” said Don Johnson, executive vice president, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). “Oracle and Microsoft have served enterprise customer needs for decades. With this partnership, our joint customers can migrate their entire set of existing applications to the cloud without having to re-architect anything, preserving the large investments they have already made.”

As a result of this expanded partnership, the companies are today making available a new set of capabilities:

• Connect Azure and Oracle Cloud seamlessly, allowing customers to extend their on-premises datacenters to both clouds. This direct interconnect is available starting today in Ashburn (North America) and Azure US East, with plans to expand additional regions in the future.
• Unified identity and access management, via a unified single sign-on experience and automated user provisioning, to manage resources across Azure and Oracle Cloud. Also available in early preview today, Oracle applications can use Azure Active Directory as the identity provider and for conditional access.
• Supported deployment of custom applications and packaged Oracle applications (JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Oracle Retail, Hyperion) on Azure with Oracle databases (RAC, Exadata, Autonomous Database) deployed in Oracle Cloud. The same Oracle applications will also be certified to run on Azure with Oracle databases in Oracle Cloud.
• A collaborative support model to help IT organizations deploy these new capabilities while enabling them to leverage existing customer support relationships and processes.
• Oracle Database will continue to be certified to run in Azure on various operating systems, including Windows Server and Oracle Linux.

“The alliance between Microsoft and Oracle is welcome news as we accelerate Albertsons’ digital transformation and leverage the full value of the public cloud,” said Anuj Dhanda, executive vice president and chief information officer at Albertsons Companies. “This will allow us to create cross-cloud solutions that optimize many of our current investments while maximizing the agility, scalability and efficiency of the public cloud.”

“As we look to bring our omnichannel experience closer together and transform the technology platform that powers the Gap Inc. brands, the collaboration between Oracle and Microsoft will make it easier for us to scale and deliver capabilities across channels,” said Sally Gilligan, chief information officer at Gap. “The interoperability between Azure and Oracle Cloud allows us to deploy Oracle or custom-built applications on Azure and Oracle databases on Oracle Cloud.”

“At Halliburton, we have a long history of running both Oracle and Microsoft technologies for our most critical applications. Our deep experience with these two strategic vendors has yielded consistently stable and performant application deployments,” said Ken Braud, senior vice president and CIO at Halliburton. “This alliance gives us the flexibility and ongoing support to continue leveraging our standard architectures, while allowing us to focus on generating business outcomes that maximize returns for our shareholders.”

Oracle and Microsoft Interconnect Clouds to Accelerate Enterprise Cloud Adoption

Since the beginning of the cloud IT era, there’s been talk of hybrid and multicloud deployment. For the most part, however, it’s been just talk. Today, Oracle is excited to announce an alliance with Microsoft that makes multicloud a reality and allows enterprises to build, migrate, and manage solutions that span clouds with ease.

The majority of large enterprises around the world use both Oracle and Microsoft solutions to power their businesses, running these solutions side-by-side in their on-premises data centers. When enterprises migrate their workloads to cloud, they often become stranded on multiple cloud islands, with little ability to share data between the islands. The alliance between Microsoft and Oracle represents an industry-first offering that gives customers the ability to seamlessly use multiple clouds with much greater effectiveness. It moves customers towards the promise of nimble apps that can shift from cloud to cloud easily, and even deploying individual apps that span multiple clouds.

Cross-Cloud Capabilities

Here are some of the specific capabilities that we’re enabling:

• Cross-cloud networking: Oracle and Microsoft have built a dedicated, high-bandwidth, low-latency private network connection between Azure and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Customers can access the connection by using either Oracle FastConnect or Microsoft ExpressRoute, and they don’t need to deal with configuration or third-party carriers. This interconnect is available starting today in Ashburn, Virginia, with expansion to other regions around the world coming soon.
• Unified identity and access management: Customers can use both clouds with single sign-on and consistent identity controls across both environments, reducing the complexity of managing two separate cloud environments. For example, customers and implementations can now use Microsoft’s widely adopted Active Directory service as the identity provider for resources in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
• Collaborative support: Customers often choose specific cloud vendors to deploy certain technology stacks because they value and rely on the enterprise-grade support provided for that stack. We are announcing a collaborative support model to help customers deploy these new interconnected configurations while enabling them to leverage existing customer-support relationships and processes. Customers can call either Microsoft or Oracle, and their issues will be handled without having to engage both vendors separately.    
• Supported cross-cloud deployment templates: The most common cross-cloud deployments will involve Oracle Database (RAC, Exadata Cloud Service, or Autonomous Database) on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and application and web tiers in Azure. Templates and best-practice architectures for many of these deployments, including .NET/Java custom apps and Oracle packaged applications, will be made available to accelerate customer deployments and standardize implementations.
• Cross-cloud provisioning: Although we expect customers will continue to use the native consoles for much of their service management, some of the most popular partner services will be made available in both consoles in coming months.

Common Multicloud Use Cases

In a connected, multicloud enterprise architecture context, customers now have the ability to run applications that share data across clouds, giving them access to their chosen vendors and services without the hassle and complexity of inconsistent management and custom interconnection. We envision the following common use cases for multicloud deployments:

• Applications run in separate clouds with consistent controls and data sharing: In this approach, customers deploy applications fully in one cloud or the other, but they benefit from common identity management, single sign-on, and the ability to share data among clouds for analytics and other secondary processes.
• Applications span clouds, typically with the database layer in one cloud and the app and web tiers in another: A low-latency connection between the clouds lets customers choose preferred components for each application, allowing a single consistent application with separate parts running in the optimal cloud for each technology stack.

In general, the first use case is more likely because demanding enterprise applications haven’t been designed to live in different locations. Over time, as applications become more decoupled, we expect to see more adoption of the second use case. Data-oriented enterprise workflows are increasingly connected, with data handoffs, validations and process extensions being key success criteria. When applications run in a customer data center, it’s fairly easy for these types of handoffs to happen with low latency. But, as these applications have moved to separate clouds, it’s been hard to make them interact effectively. This multicloud agreement will enable just that, giving customers the ability to build a web of loosely coupled yet tightly interconnected applications that span the two vendor’s clouds.

Meeting Customer Demand

The customers that we’ve talked to about these multicloud configurations are eager to get access to this capability. These customers include Albertsons, one of the largest food and drug retailers in the US; Gap Inc., a leading global retailer; and Halliburton, one of the world's largest oil industry services companies. Each of these companies uses both Microsoft and Oracle in their IT operations, with key applications on both of the vendor stacks.

I want to thank the engineers and architects from both Oracle and Microsoft who moved this idea into reality. Our combined focus on customers and getting the job done has made this possible.

Oracle is tremendously excited to give our customers the ability to leverage our technology alongside that of another industry leader with dramatically reduced friction. We see this as a first step down the path of greater choice, flexibility, and effectiveness for enterprise cloud usage. We’re eager to see what our customers will build with this new capability, and where this alliance will take us and the industry.

Oracle Advances Safer : More Transparent Retail Supply Chain

The retail industry is more complex than ever. Not only are consumers looking for high-quality goods at fair prices, but they also want assurance that their purchases are safe and ethically sourced. That requires retailers to maintain transparency across their global supply chain networks. With new advancements in reporting and analytics and continued extension of integrations, Oracle Retail Brand Compliance Management Cloud Service is helping retailers monitor the integrity of their materials and end products, to improve customer experiences and protect their brands. 

Oracle Retail Brand Compliance is specifically designed to enable retailers, restaurants, food service providers and manufacturers to source, develop, track and market products. As products are developed, the solution audits and manages all aspects of the process, creating accurate and certified labeling detail against local regulatory and industry policies. As such, brands can rapidly and nimbly respond to and rectify product and industry incidents.

In 2016, a multistate listeria outbreak in the U.S. impacted several name brand grocery chains. Tainted frozen vegetables and fruits sourced from one plant were included in approximately 358 consumer products sold under 42 separate brands. Using Oracle Retail Brand Compliance, one well-known grocer was able to quickly pull SKUs, identify where impacted product was being sold and communicate with customers, mitigating the situation, and protecting its shoppers.

“Delivering on your brand promise today is as much about quality and trust as it is about cost,” said Jeff Warren, vice president of strategy and solution management, Oracle Retail. “Customers expect retailers to know everything about the items they purchase, whether this is information on availability, ingredients or the manufacturing process. They expect transparency and greater access to information, in real time. The biggest names in grocery rely on Oracle Retail Brand Compliance to meet these expectations while protecting their customers and brands.” 

Driving Compliance and Safety Across the Retail Supply Chain

Oracle Retail Brand Compliance is one of the world’s most widely adopted brand management solutions, representing two-thirds of all private label compliance and technical portals in use today. The offering provides a single point of authentication of all audits, accreditations and certificates. With it, common data sets are entered once and shared amongst the community to report on quality, environment, freshness and sustainability metrics and track the movement of products to drive risk assessment and rapid response to incidents. Today, the Oracle Retail Brand Compliance community represents more than 250,000 suppliers offering 750,000 consumer products.

With new enhancements to the offering, retail supply chain professionals will be able to more easily provide transparency of product information across partners and channels, with enhanced:

• KPI dashboards that deliver key insights, business intelligence and operational reporting on supply chain and product analysis.
• Consumer product compositions to enable in-store formulations, labeling and digital dietary advice.
• API integrations with key Oracle applications.

“For retailers, having full visibility across their entire supply chains is a game-changer. It can mean the difference between minutes or weeks when responding to incidents, tracking and removing contaminated food from store shelves and notifying consumers. Brand damage aside, that can mean the difference between life and death,” noted Paul Woodward, senior director of Oracle Retail supply chain solutions.

TWINSET Curates a Sophisticated Customer Experience with Oracle Retail

TWINSET curates a unique assortment of women’s ready-to-wear fashion, shoes and accessories sold online and across renowned Italian, European and Russian cities. As the company continued to grow, they knew maintaining harmony between delivering high-quality clothing and excellent customer service was essential. With Oracle Retail’s modern point of service (POS) technology, TWINSET can open more boutiques and corner stores that meet international requirements, while delighting sophisticated shoppers with associates that are informed and ready to help.

“We want our consumers, the brand and our associates to be in harmony when they enter the store. By putting intuitive and modern technology at our associates’ fingertips, they can focus on the customer and delivering a seamless omnichannel experience,” said Federico Tamburini, IT and logistic director, TWINSET. “Oracle also enables us to quickly roll out new boutiques by leveraging the international and localization capabilities inherent in the solution.”  

In the recent Topography of Retail Report, nearly 6,400 European consumers surveyed prioritized knowledgeable in-store staff (73 percent) as one of the most compelling attributes of a shopping experience. Oracle Retail Xstore Point-of-Service will empower TWINSET associates to deliver on the brand commitment in store with inventory visibility, customer intelligence, and seamless transactions.

For example, from a tablet, an associate will be able to easily pull up a customer’s recent transactions to get a sense of their style and make suggestions on new merchandise or easily order an out-of-stock item from the website and have it shipped directly to the customer with no hassle.

“The in-store experience must go beyond transactions alone. Retailers, particularly fashion retailers, must dazzle their customers at the point of interest. By modernizing in-store POS technology, brands such as TWINSET are putting consumer intelligence in the associates’ hands, allowing them to personalize the interaction and build trust between the brand and the individual,” said Mike Webster, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Retail.

The Top Way to Keep Your Best Employees

Want to keep your best talent? Invest in their learning and development.

I read an article recently about recession proofing your organization with digital badging. The article made some great points about how the record low unemployment rate (3.9% in December 2018) may not last, with some analysts predicting a slow down in growth as early as 2020.

The article went on to point out that during the 'Great Recession of 2008,' employers who focused on training and developing their workforce over cutting jobs and focusing solely on the bottom line actually made financial gains. "On average, those top 10% of engaged employers posted profit gains of 26% through the last recession, compared with a 14% decline at comparable employers, says Jim Harter, Chief Workplace Scientist at Gallup."

The author wrapped up the article with a compelling finding supporting training and digital credentialing. "When employees are trained on the job, an organization can save an average of $70,000 annually and receive a 10% increase in productivity, according to Forbes."

Certification is a sound investment in any economy!

Oracle Certification has a well-established digital credentialing program. Surveys consistently show that having certified individuals in your organization increases productivity, customer satisfaction, and job satisfaction. It would stand to reason that if a focus on training and development could help to recession-proof your business by keeping your best talent and making them more productive, the same training and development could help keep your best talent during a time of economic growth.  

Related:  Digital Badges Are Now an Essential Tool for Employers and Candidates Alike

According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics' Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, published January 9, 2019, the ratio of unemployed persons per job opening was 0.9 in November 2018. This means that there is more than one job opening for every unemployed person, which shows a dramatic decrease from Great Recession numbers, when there were more than six unemployed people for every job opening.

Related:  European Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Jobs are Booming, but...

Employment experts say that this is an excellent time to look for a new job. So, how do you keep your talent? Invest in them! Certification increases job satisfaction by giving employees more knowledge and skills to help them perform better.

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