Oracle Looks to Keep AI 'Simple' Across the Stack

At the turn of the year, Oracle unveiled AI tools across its whole portfolio to help enterprises integrate AI. Doug Kehring, the company’s executive VP for corporate operations, said the key is to keep AI simple.

During the keynote at Oracle’s CloudWorld event in London, Kehring said that AI should not be an afterthought, with Oracle opting to embed the technology into its products “from the start.”

Kehring criticized competitors for using "far-fetched" product names. “Some have used historical figures like Einstein,” referencing Salesforce’s AI platform. “It's a little dated in my opinion,” Kehring said.

“Others have used medieval figures like a Bard,” a reference to Google Bard, now known as Gemini. Kehring admitted he did not know what a Bard was.

The executive said what sets Oracle apart from its competitors is its simplicity, even in its name, Oracle AI.

Kehring said that Oracle built AI into its enterprise products to help businesses fulfill their goals by leveraging unique data insights, combining generic knowledge from large language models with specific business data to generate tailored ideas.

“AI generally can help you with everything from better customer response rates to more favorable underwriting to better patient outcomes, to workplace safety, to less financial fraud.”

Customer stories

From Left: Nick Griffin from the Cabinet Office and Oracle’s Doug Kehring

During the keynote, Oracle brought out several customers to talk about their digital transformation journeys.

Nick Griffin, the crown representative from the Cabinet Office made an appearance. He said the U.K. government was applying AI not only to improve productivity but also to improve the accuracy of outcomes.

“[AI] is not just about productivity, it's about the benefit that we get from that as well through being able to access services in a way that is much more suitable to us.”

Griffin said governments have to be mindful of the security of data used when deploying AI. He expressed hope that data security does not get in the way of being able to harness the technology.

“I think we can find a way through the security issues because the advances are so immense that we could really benefit from them,” Griffin added.

Pedro Sardo, technology shared services and group IT operations director at Vodafone, also came on stage.

Sardo said the telecommunications company was using AI to improve the productivity of its office staff and its software engineers as well as to “better serve our customers.”

Giving an example, Sardo said summarization tools could allow Vodafone’s call center teams to get an “early warning” of issues from customers, giving the company time to sort an issue before it becomes too widespread.

From left: Pedro Sardo, technology shared services and group IT operations director at Vodafone with Doug Kehring