Ed Zou, Vice President of Product Management for Oracle Cloud Platform, introduced how Oracle Cloud Platform can be leveraged within your organization to bring your application transformation to the next level. Oracle Cloud Platform is one of four Oracle services. Oracle offers Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), and Data as a Service (DaaS).

Oracle Cloud Platform has the ability to support Oracle SaaS applications, third-party SaaS applications, and on-premise applications. Co-innovation with PaaS for SaaS provides customers with new functionality and technology, new experiences, simpler and faster connectivity, blended visual analytics, and additional security options. PaaS for SaaS provides a simple, innovative, advanced and smart solution. Oracle Cloud Platform capabilities include connecting, extending, securing and analyzing.

• Connect: Accelerate connecting with on-premises applications, third parties, data and processes
• Extend: Extend SaaS by building new applications and new experiences to support unique business models
• Secure: Detect and remediate unauthorized infiltration or malicious insider activity with continuous user behavior monitoring
• Analyze: Blend external data with SaaS or an expanded view of your business

These capabilities become usage patterns for customers who want to utilize PaaS for SaaS. The ability to connect, extend, secure and analyze brings on several benefits as a result of PaaS for SaaS.

Connect Patterns

With Connect Patterns, customers can:

• Get data to/from applications faster and with more accuracy and visibility
• Automate manual processes across applications
• Connect Oracle SaaS with third-party SaaS and on-premise applications

Some areas of interest within this pattern include data migration between on-prem and SaaS, data exchange between multiple apps, data feeds in batch from third-parties and manual entry of data from one app to another. Some features of Oracle Cloud Platform that allow it to connect easily include:

• 50+ pre-built adapters and flows for CX, HCM and ERP integrations
• A point-and-click interface for non-developers
• ML-based Yelp-like ratings and recommendations for faster mappings
• Intelligent data profiling to auto-populate data catalogs and warehouses
• ML-based smarter process automation
• Turnkey recipe-style integrations

Extend Patterns

With Extend Patterns, customers can:

• Meet unique requirements with SaaS
• Deliver a modern user experience
• Leverage new technologies to improve efficiency

Some areas of interest within this pattern include required functions not in SaaS or on the roadmap, the voice/chatbot and content experience across apps, automated processes spanning across apps, and using blockchain and IoT to improve efficiency. Some features of Oracle Cloud Platform that allow it to connect easily include:

• Ability to extend SaaS with custom web and mobile apps
• Conversational AI/chatbot extensions for seamless bot-to-human hand-off
• Leveraging Blockchain to extend enterprise boundaries
• Omni-channel content delivery
• Rapid, visual development of sites
• Customer/employee experience analytics

Secure Patterns

With Secure Patterns, customers can:

• Detect and prevent malicious user behavior
• Maintain accurate, faster responses to audit and compliance

Some areas of interest within this pattern include reporting on and preventing unusual SaaS user behavior, monitoring privileged SaaS roles, and tracing SaaS user activities for audit and compliance. Some features of Oracle Cloud Platform that allow it to connect easily include:

• Monitoring SaaS and apps access perimeters
• Monitoring privileged SaaS and apps roles
• Detecting abnormal SaaS user behavior with adaptive intelligence to prevent fraud
• Monitoring Personally Identifiable Information (PII) update by unauthorized users
• Created unified SSO and multi-factor user authentication across apps

Analyze Patterns

With Analyze Patterns, customers can:

• Utilize reporting and insight across data that is inside/outside SaaS
• Take advantage of self-service data visualization for business users

Some areas of interest within this pattern include exploring blended data from SaaS and beyond, self-service discovery guided by Machine Learning, and needing prebuilt data visualization packs for LOB. Some features of Oracle Cloud Platform that allow it to connect easily include:

• Naturally engaging with your data by voice
• Smart data connectors for Oracle SaaS, apps and other sources
• Pre-built content packs for Oracle SaaS users
• Automated visualization, data preparation and discovery with blended data (Excel, DB, third-party, etc.)
• Automated intelligence and recommendations via Machine Learning
• Proactive, personalized analytics based on context

Summary

PaaS accelerates innovation with SaaS. Connecting, extending, securing and analyzing through Oracle Cloud Platform allows customers to connect data faster in real time (which is essential for moving on-prem customers to the Cloud), provide a connected experience that wows users, reduce risk exposure and connect intelligence with modern analytics. For more information and best practices, check out How to Leverage the Power of Oracle PaaS.