Stories From the Cloud

Emerging technologies promise to change the way we do business. But if employees don't use the new software and gadgets at their disposal, that promise will never become reality. Paul Gaynor, global technology practice leader at PwC, discusses ways to get user buy-in, increase adoption of new tech, and drive digital transformation.

There's no industry that isn't facing some form of mass disruption. And companies that are ahead of the curve in terms of business and IT transformation can help others along the way. In this episode, Doug Kehring, executive vice president of corporate operations at Oracle, discusses the tech giant's own journey to the cloud and how it's sharing lessons learned with customers.

The unique shopping habits of millennials and Generation Z mean retail and marketing are ripe for disruption. And startups are uniquely positioned to take advantage. Visual search platform Snap Tech and marketing technology provider BrandTotal, members of the Oracle for Startups program, are two such companies. Jenny Griffiths, CEO and co-founder of Snap Tech, and Alon Leibovich, CEO and co-founder of BrandTotal, join the podcast to discuss how younger shoppers are different—and how emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence can help meet their needs.

Businesses that are more diverse outperform their competitors, according to research. Technology can help remove the biases that contribute to the gender pay gap and otherwise hinder diversity in business. Technology can also help give businesses access to the best talent pool, regardless of gender. Those are the goals of Gapsquare, a startup whose software analyzes companies' pay by gender and helps drive organizational change. In this episode, Zara Nanu, CEO and co-founder of Gapsquare, and Jason Williamson, Vice President of Oracle for Startups, discuss the current state of diversity in business and the ways in which technology can help close the gender pay gap.

In the past, technology vendors and their customers emphasized function over form. But that's changing as employees expect applications to not only work flawlessly -- but to look good doing so. Michael Krigsman, industry analyst and host of the CXOTalk podcast, chats about the changing roles of CXOs and the effects of personal devices and applications on how businesses operate.

Artificial intelligence could be tech's great hope -- if it overcomes serious issues around modeling and data integrity. Cloud influencer Bill Kleyman discusses the hype and reality of AI and tackles topics such as: A drone that used AI and repeated trial-and-error (including many crashes) to teach itself to fly and navigate. How the "garbage in, garbage out" adage that has governed computing for decades is still true. If your data or model is faulty, your AI won't amount to much.

Keeping data safe and secure is a hugely complicated job — especially for large businesses that collect, store, and analyze tons of data. KPMG's Brian Jensen and Oracle's Greg Jensen discuss why the security stakes are higher than ever as more mission-critical workloads -- and their data -- move to the cloud.

Bots are getting a lot smarter and more interactive. Oracle's Suhas Uliyar talks about: How advances in AI and natural language processing are making bots more proactive How digital assistants can help manage rote business tasks like expense account or vacation approval processes How Oracle uses its experience in applications and data to train business-oriented bots