Enterprises are increasingly recognising the value of multi-cloud architectures and the ability to capitalise on the unique strengths of various cloud platforms to enhance their operational capabilities, says Shailender Kumar, senior vice-president and regional managing director of Oracle India and Netsuite JAPAC. In this interview, he speaks to Sudhir Chowdhary on the emerging trends in cloud computing and how cloud providers are embedding AI capabilities into their services. Excerpts:
Why is multicloud essential for modern businesses?
Over the past years, conversations with customers have revealed a clear perspective. They seek a platform that empowers their operations without imposing restrictions – one that offers the flexibility to select the optimal cloud environment tailored to the needs of their most critical workloads. Multicloud has become a strategic necessity and standard for businesses, which is fundamentally providing the flexibility to choose the best-of-breed solutions from different cloud providers without being tied to a single provider, ensuring performance, scalability, and control.
How is Oracle helping customers accelerate cloud adoption to their advantage?
Cloud has been witnessing accelerated acceptance for its price-performance, cost optimisation, scalability, flexibility, and business continuity. Yet, many organisations have not embarked on their cloud journeys because they have workloads that cannot effectively run in the public cloud because of either latency, data residency or data sovereignty.
Our approach is based on the idea that the cloud should be engineered to support every app, rather than forcing customers to re-engineer their applications to work with the cloud. To do this, we had to build a different cloud. OCI or Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is a next-generation cloud, that is designed to address issues that customers care most about: deployment choice, interoperability, better price performance and built-in security.
How does multicloud integration power AI and application modernisation for companies?
The business landscape is changing rapidly driven by demand for technologies that can modernise applications, ensure compliance and improve AI across diverse industries. To fulfil these needs, organisations need modern tools that support innovation and help simplify operations while optimising cost and performance. A multicloud approach can help customers unlock the full potential of their data, help them discover new strategies for optimising resources, boost resilience and maximise value of their data and cloud investments. By combining the best of the cloud with their data, customers can quickly build and modernise applications. AI is in-built in all these options.
Will companies start measuring ROI in 2025?
A significant challenge in AI adoption is determining when, how, and where to apply AI, how to use the data, and how to measure ROI accurately. Businesses that are unable to take sufficient advantage of their data face limitations in getting the best results. Many organisations will expect immediate results and may prematurely reduce their investments in AI when the impact is not realised soon. Patience, and a clear alignment between AI and business objectives is essential to drive success of AI. Leaders that focus on mid to long-term innovation, and integration will be able to maximise the potential of AI systems. AI adoption holds immense promise and is cementing its role as the defining technology of the decade. AI is already being embedded in every enterprise’s DNA operation and will be applied across businesses – be it finance, HR or supply chain. Those who adopt AI will accelerate performance, while others risk falling behind.
How is Oracle helping organisations deploy high performing AI?
We’re now enhancing AI usage at a functional level – they are embedded into our infrastructure layer, platform services, databases, and business applications. Capriglobal, a growing non-banking financial company has deployed OCI, including AI services, to transform customer experiences, enhance their digital transformation and drive growth. Recently, we introduced 50 AI agents that can automate key functions such as finance, HR, supply ch,, nb ain, and customer service, driving greater efficiency and productivity for our customers. Oracle AI Agents don’t just automate; they collaborate with human workers, making AI agents more than just tools.
