It is an ancient post now, but I had written The Best UI is no UI. One of the most interesting things to come out of Unit4’s analyst summit last week was its vision of “self-driving” ERP, their vision of machine learning and artificial intelligence driving the user interface.
Stephan Sieber, EVP of Strategy and Operations, explains
“Like a self-driving car, self-driving ERP takes care of tasks that are better served by technology, leaving people to focus on the exceptions that need human intervention.
Self-driving ERP doesn’t ask the user to constantly enter data. It doesn’t require huge amounts of training in order for users to understand how to achieve desired outcomes. Self-driving ERP becomes an intelligent support and planning system that utilizes information from all sorts of internal and external sources including productivity tools (calendar, outlook, document systems, social tools) to drive cases,projects and initiatives and tasks. It delivers actionable insight based on what it already knows. The system will make suggestions based on company behavior, personal behavior, the weather, traffic and all other possible sources it pulls data from.”
Three things I like about Unit4’s vision
a) They are leveraging Microsoft’s machine learning advances (it’s a broader arrangement where MS Azure data centers will also provide the IaaS for Unit4’s public cloud) (click image to enlarge)

b) They have already considered several vertical scenarios for the people/services industries they are focusing on. Since the Microsoft arrangement is not exclusive, how vendors like Unit4 differentiate with it will be key

c) Not something they mentioned last week, but listening to Thomas Staven and Ton Dobbe of Unit4 discuss electronic documents in the Nordic public sector, I was reminded that in I had profiled a Swedish government customer of Agresso (now Unit4) in The New Polymath in 2010. The document exchange involved 85,000 suppliers and tens of millions of invoices. I was impressed at the digitization progress even back then. Think of the ability to train machines with that much data already digitized. Also exciting to see Unit4’s ability to take that experience to other parts of the world.
Photo Credit: Unit4
Oracle Cloud Summit: A Marvel of ‘Miniaturization’
As I wrote here, the quality of vendor analyst summits has improved dramatically in the last couple of years. Looking at the agenda I was sent ahead of coming to this week’s Oracle Cloud Summit I was prepared for an endless stream of Powerpoint presentations.
Instead I was impressed with the variety of perspectives – not just product centric, but executive, sales field, customer, partner as well. Day 2 was similar but focused more on HCM products – a bit of a repeat of the themes I had heard in Washington last month, but with a newer set of customer and executive voices
Thomas Kurian, President, set the tempo for day 1 with a slide a minute for 45 minutes where he summarized Oracle’s growing portfolio of –as-a-service offerings – SaaS, Paas, Iaas and DaaS. The man has a breathtaking command of Oracle products and you have to admire how efficiently he covered the portfolio. Across the two days, 20+ presenters marched through, by my estimate, over 750 slides.
CEO Mark Hurd took a different tack and presented more on state of the industry and a handful of slides with lots of white space, and instead answered several questions from the audience.
The night before as part of a reception, Oracle had several booths to show off its investments in UX. Day 2 we got to visit the applications UX lab with all kids of devices, motion analysis, eye tracking and other technology. The end result is a pleasing front end to a growing set of Oracle apps. Between the two days Oracle, also managed to showcase 20 short demos across the sessions.
Three panels hosted by Shawn Price, SVP Oracle Cloud, showcased 14 Oracle customers/partners, and 5 of Oracle’s field executives representing a breadth of industries and geographies. Many of them were available for conversations during the rest of the day. On Day 2, two HCM customers and two Oracle (internal) HR executives provided additional color
The setting – Half Moon Bay for Day 1 and Redwood Shores for Day 2 -allowed for plenty of fresh air and also pleased my FitBit. With so much to cover, it was thoughtful of Oracle to allow for enough “outside time”
Finally, given the mass of content at most of these summits, I find myself chasing the vendor for copies of slides for days afterwards. Oracle had them all on an internal portal by the afternoon of Day 1 and on a zip drive for Day 2. A minor detail, but again reflective of the logistical feat the event delivered.
I heard a few analysts bitch about information overload – clearly there was with that much content. Others complained there was not enough detail in some sessions. To me, that’s what follow up calls are for.
I for one appreciated the large investment Oracle made and for packing so much into the two days. It’s miniaturization applied to our world of content.
May 02, 2015 in Cloud/Utility Computing, Industry Commentary | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)