I have heard many times the famous quote regarding cloud computing spoken by Larry Ellison of Oracle – “cloud is a fad”.

I have also witnessed a number of people claim Oracle is too late for cloud, cloud is only AWS and subject to an early mover advantage this includes people within my own organisation.

[easy-tweet tweet=”Let’s run with the assumption that first mover advantage means market control…” user=”comparethecloud”]

For a moment let’s assume the cloud purists are correct and that the AWS early advantage captured the hearts and minds of the development and startup communities and launched household names such as Netflix et al.

Using this assumption of ‘first mover advantage’ would mean that all products and marketplaces are under the control of the originator of the product or service.

Karl Benz would have complete control of the automobile market and there would never have been Henry T Ford with his Model T and mass production?

Motorola invented the first mobile telephone they would have retained ownership of the mobile marketplace (I must put down my shiny gold iPhone 6 plus 128gb)

Richard Trevithick dominated the worldwide need for steam locomotives with his patents creating wealth beyond imagination

Second Life outstripped Facebook with new user sign-ups and advertising revenues

pioneers do not always capture a marketplace

The point I am trying to make here is that pioneers do not always capture a marketplace. And where technology and certainly the Enterprise is concerned the transference of e-commerce born-on-the-web approaches to customer service and problem resolution will not be based on self-service web support.

[easy-tweet tweet=”Enterprises and #SMBs will require problem resolutions from human beings, not automated algorithms”]

Enterprises and SMBs will require/desire problem resolutions from human beings, not automated algorithms.

The Enterprise has always been the traditional domain of the large IT players such as IBM, HP, Dell, and Oracle; and whilst there is always going to be talk of disruption, these companies are transforming.

So back to Oracle; why do I feel they are a sleeping giant?

See below a picture of a job advertisement that has been published across social media recently.

I must admit after seeing this advert and reading the job posting link I had to stand back and nod in agreement.

When looking at the description a number of things stood out for me;

Use of social media for prospecting and profiling customers leveraging social selling techniques

Building out consultative inside sales teams rather than enterprise sales types

Aiming towards a younger millennial workforce (I judged this by the imagery used)

The separation into 3 simple to understand areas of sales engagement

a sleeping giant has awoken

My view is that a sleeping giant has taken the traditional Chinese business approach of approaching a market late with a view to disrupting it with a new approach and price. Both of which Oracle cloud has signalled very loudly to the marketplace.

A significant advantage that plays to Oracle’s strength is the far reach into its traditional customer base. Perhaps with this team that is being assembled across the globe Oracle is intending to disrupt itself, a move the majority of its legacy customer base would welcome we suspect.

We will be keeping a close eye on Oracle Cloud developments in the coming months, my personal view is that there is a giant that has awoken from a self-induced slumber, and it will be attacking the cloud market in anger soon.