Leading the IBM Oracle Americas practice

For more than 25 years, I’ve been privileged to be a part of the Oracle ecosystem—first with Oracle Database, then JD Edwards and, over the last 5 years, the Oracle Cloud Applications. I’ve had the firsthand opportunity to see hundreds of organizations transform and grow their business with Oracle and IBM solutions in the various roles that I’ve played here at IBM. I’m excited to announce that earlier this month I was appointed to a new role as the?IBM Oracle practice leader for the Americas. I’m thrilled about this opportunity to grow our Americas practice and help more businesses modernize and innovate with Oracle solutions. I have the good fortune to work with outstanding technology and people in the Americas who are helping businesses drive real transformation.

The IBM Oracle services team has helped numerous clients undergo digital transformation and hybrid cloud projects. To name just a few recent examples:

·??????We helped the Massachusetts-based computer services company?Akamai?transform its financial and HR systems with Oracle Cloud Applications—accelerating financial reporting, boosting employee productivity and enabling self-service completion of HR tasks.?

·??????We supported the New-Jersey based?ConnectOne Bank?with the modernization of its financial processes using a suite of Oracle cloud-service solutions that ultimately helped it speed up monthly closing, regulatory reporting and audit preparation, while giving its customers fast, personalized loan services.

·??????We worked with?Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment—owner of some of Canada’s leading sporting franchises—to implement Oracle Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to help it plan, budget and forecast in one financial management tool, saving hundreds of hours of manual effort.

There are many more stories like these where technology and people come together to achieve real business benefits. And there will be many more to come as we continue to develop our Oracle offerings and collaboration.??

Our digital transformation journey

The IBM Oracle practice in the Americas has recently been realigned in 2 major focus areas to enhance the business transformation we bring to clients: finance and supply chain transformation, led by?Neil McLaughlin, and talent transformation, led by?Amy Wright.?Sean Campbell?leads our business transformation services, and between Neil, Amy and Sean, I’ve not seen a leadership team more passionate and committed to win the hearts and minds of our Oracle ecosystem.

To propel our digital transformation, we’re integrating processes across organizational boundaries and systems. The financial transformation will provide a seamless, 360-degree view across subsidiaries, legal entities, products and sales territories, leading to accurate, real-time forecasting and planning.?With supply chain transformation, we can get real-time inventory information, drive traceability in real time, reduce costs of transportation and storage, and optimize delivery.?And talent transformation offers the promise of automating the hiring process with intelligence, ensuring a continuous learning experience and succession planning.?

As we realign in these areas, the IBM Oracle services team remains laser-focused on helping clients move forward on their cognitive journey with our Oracle Cloud services and offerings.?

IBM Cognitive Enterprise Business Platform

At IBM Oracle services, we’re very excited about our Oracle Cloud software as a service (SaaS) offering, the?IBM Cognitive Enterprise Business Platform for Oracle Cloud. It’s a next-generation business model that’s industry-specific and offers intelligent workflows that take advantage of emerging technologies.

The Cognitive Enterprise Business Platform centers on Oracle Cloud applications and is differentiated by its industry-specific focus and intelligent workflows that are ready for immediate use.

It’s industry-tailored for the following 12 industries:

·??????Banking

·??????Telecommunications

·??????Life sciences

·??????Retail

·??????Insurance

·??????Manufacturing

·??????Healthcare

·??????Transportation

·??????Professional services

·??????Energy and utilities

·??????Government

·??????Mining and construction

Using a preconfigured solution for your industry has many benefits, helping you deploy more quickly and easily for the use cases most relevant to your business.?

IBM Cognitive Enterprise Business Platform for Oracle Cloud also includes roughly 75 intelligent workflows that incorporate emerging technologies like automation, AI, the IoT and blockchain. The intelligent workflows are structured by industry and domain—such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management and human capital management.

I’m very excited to introduce this platform to more of our Americas clients and help them explore its advantages for their digital transformation.?

Learn more about IBM Cognitive Enterprise Business Platform for Oracle Cloud

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

IBM also remains committed to helping our clients succeed with hybrid cloud using?Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). OCI delivers numerous benefits for Oracle clients on their hybrid cloud journey—from superior performance to predictable pricing to enterprise-grade security capabilities. In addition to the Cognitive Enterprise Business Platform for Oracle Cloud, IBM offers a range of services to support clients with hybrid cloud, such as:

Managed applications.?We can migrate and manage complex workloads using IBM-managed applications for OCI, which is about 80% automated and built to meet regulated industry standards, with security as a key focus.

Cloud native.?We also offer a microservices-based platform to support cloud-native development—the IBM Microservices and DevOps Platform for Oracle—which allows us to deliver a use case in production in 10 days. With this platform, you can modernize on-premises applications and take advantage of containerization with the Red Hat? OpenShift? Platform. And we support all flavors of OCI, including Cloud@Customer.

The IBM Oracle Americas Practice team

Another exciting aspect of my new role is the talented and highly experienced team I get to work with. This team has been with me on the journey of building the Cognitive Enterprise Business Platform and comes with great depth of industry knowledge. We have leaders in banking, insurance, automotive, industrial products, electronics, energy and utilities, and government.

Our leadership team includes:

·????Jay Chatterjee,?Lissa Watson, Oracle HCM Cloud Leaders

·??????Caesar Montoya?and?Mani Vasudevan, Oracle ERP, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) and Analytics Cloud Leaders

·??????David Ray,?Carlos Casanova?and?Inderjeet Singh, Oracle Supply Chain Management (SCM) Cloud Leaders

·??????Manohar Menon, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Leader

·??????Layne Nelson, Oracle Customer Experience (CX) Cloud Leader

·??????Marc Bjarnson, JD Edwards and Apps Unlimited Leader

·??????Hong Yu Tong, Oracle Tiger Team Leader

And then we have our sector go-to-market (GTM) leaders:

·??????Randy Chinn, Industrial GTM Leader

·??????Raj Katriyar, Financial Services GTM Leader

·??????Debbie Bates, Public Sector GTM Leader

·??????Ruth Ella George, Federal GTM Leader

·??????Bob Brnilovich, Communication GTM Leader

·??????Bernie Semenjuk, Oracle Practice Leader, Canada

We’re also supported by a team of client leaders, including?Amy Adkins,?Shauna Gerth,?Bob Gursky,?Mark Welsh,?Jean-Jacques Jetté,?Tom Kunimoto,?Wendy Plante,?Randall Parker?and?Rob Readmond, as well as our talented Oracle Marketing and Communications Leader?Lauren Baker.

And we have top talent in our Oracle career professionals for the alliances:

·??????Teresa Hanson, Oracle Alliance Leader, Americas

·??????Angie Chatham, Oracle Global Strategic Alliances Leader

Our Oracle Americas practice is part of the hyper-growth global Oracle team led by?Rob Churchyard, who is a globally recognized Oracle leader, with direct oversight from the visionary leadership of our global Finance and Supply Chain Transformation Leader?Jonathan Wright.

This award-winning, diverse and seasoned consulting team has been leading global business transformation with decades of experience. I’m very much looking forward to bringing the best of IBM business transformation services and talent to our Oracle clients.?

IBM and Oracle: 34 years of partnership

IBM and Oracle have been collaborating strategically for more than 3 decades, and IBM has 10,000 dedicated Oracle consultants who’ve helped clients on over 6,500 Oracle projects. IBM is among the world’s top 5 global Oracle practices and longest-serving Oracle partner. Our partnership has a rich history supporting organizations at every stage of their Oracle investment. Not only that, but IBM frequently receives awards and recognition for our work with Oracle clients, including both Oracle Partner Awards and third-party market research recognitions. IBM was named a Leader in 2 different 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrants: the?2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Oracle Cloud Application Services, Worldwide?and the?2021 Critical Capabilities for Oracle Cloud Application Services, Worldwide. IBM has also been named the?number one consulting firm?in the world and a?supply chain leader?globally for Oracle Ecosystems services.

Before I close, I’ll leave you with a few more recent client stories from our IBM Oracle practice in the Americas:?

·??????Freedom Powersports?wanted to upgrade some of its enterprise processes with Oracle EPM Cloud. We helped it accelerate month-end closing and data analysis and build more inventory reports—enabling it to optimize the profitability of its retail assets.

·??????The Canadian accounting firm?Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton?needed to update its on-premises infrastructure to a cloud solution that would deliver more speed and agility, so it decided to migrate its business applications to Oracle ERP Cloud platform. IBM Services? served as a systems integrator for the comprehensive new Oracle cloud platform, which provides real-time access to business insights and increases worker productivity.?

The IBM Oracle Americas practice is committed to continuing this history of supporting Oracle clients on their cloud and digital transformation journeys. Feel free to reach out to me and my team. We’re excited for this new era and want to work with Oracle colleagues, IBM Business Partners and Oracle clients. Don’t hesitate to let us know how we can help.?