Tambellini Top 10 Observations from Oracle OpenWorld and Workday Rising

The Tambellini Group has been busy this fall connecting with vendors and institutions about the latest technology updates. These past couple of months we have attended several market events and took away some insights for our future work.

Oracle OpenWorld took place in September in San Francisco, and Workday Rising was held in Orlando in October. Oracle OpenWorld featured over 2,000 sessions and focused on higher education more this year than in the past. Workday Rising had over 13,000 attendees and reflected on the achievements of the past year and announces anticipated innovations.

Top 10 Observations from Oracle OpenWorld

1. Mark
   Hurd was noticeably absent, and the only person that could acknowledge it was Larry
   Ellison. In a particularly touching, unscripted moment, Ellison stopped his
   keynote address to say that he missed his friend.
2. Larry Ellison is determined that
   Oracle compete with Amazon cloud
   services.
3. Oracle
   has rebranded,
   and the branding extends to the user interfaces/usability for clients. Under
   the direction of Larry Ellison, Oracle wants to work with customers as a
   person-driven company. Oracle hired top branding and user-interface designers
   and worked with clients to ensure that the new user experience improves the
   user experience.
4. Oracle is committed to
   developing solutions to meet the needs
   of higher education institutions. Product announcements were plentiful, and
   the roadmap is robust.
5. Oracle customers using PeopleSoft are largely content with the
   solutions from Oracle.
6. Oracle is delivering autonomous databases, operating
   systems, and applications.
7. Higher
   education sessions were in a convenient location. Tambellini observed more
   prospects and customers in attendance in 2019. In prior years, higher education
   sessions were not convenient to most other sessions, but this year, they were
   held in the main conference location.
8. The sentiment of Oracle higher education customers was
   positive. Customers expressed particular excitement about Student Financial
   Planning (SFP), a stand-alone solution. One of the first customers is a
   private, not-for-profit, four-year U.S. institution.
9. R1
   institutions
   such as Rice, Baylor, and Rutgers have recently become Oracle Cloud clients.
10. Oracle wants to do the right
    things for customers. The company is big, and higher education has the attention of Larry Ellison.

Top 10 Observations from Workday Rising

1. Jerry
   Seinfeld’s kick-off keynote elevated Workday’s value of fun to a new high. Seinfeld’s
   jokes about everyday things from cell phones to bucket lists were the perfect
   way to start Rising.
2. Artificial intelligence and
   machine learning
   are infiltrating the Workday product stack in meaningful and predictive ways.
   Ensemble algorithms, enabled by the Power of 1, enable the aggregation of
   predictions from multiple machine-learning algorithms to make more accurate
   predictions within Workday.
3. One of the offshoots of
   Workday’s use of artificial intelligence and machine learning is the Workday
   People Experience, a revolutionary employee experience that is
   personalized, intelligent, and focused on improving knowledge sharing,
   collaboration, and efficiency. Workday’s People Experience is now available to
   early adopters and features a smart search; knowledgebase and FAQs; Workday
   Assistant for on-demand help, task management, and HR case creation and
   management; and integration with Microsoft Teams. General availability is
   anticipated for spring 2020.
4. Workday Skills Cloud uses machine language to
   mine an employee’s skills by looking at performance reviews, skills
   endorsements, suggestions, and talent profiles. Workday Skills Cloud is now
   available to early adopters, with anticipated general availability in spring
   2020.
5. Workday Talent Marketplace allows users to identify
   internal growth opportunities using artificial intelligence and machine
   learning that looks at skills matching, job history, and areas of interest.
   Employees can be alerted of new career opportunities.
6. Workday Cloud Platform is in limited general
   availability in 59 client institutions with 60 live applications. General
   release is scheduled for 2020, and Workday anticipates the availability of partner
   applications in the near future.
7. Workday Wayto is the first application
   that is separate from Workday. Leveraging open standards and blockchain
   technology, Workday Wayto is an individual application designed to issue,
   track, verify, and share certifications and credentials. Availability of Wayto
   is anticipated for 2020.
8. Workday has made significant
   enhancements to Workday Planning in the area of Discovery Boards and People
   Analytics. Workday has taken its drag-and-drop data-discovery technology
   from Prism Analytics and has incorporated it into Workday Financial Management
   in the form of Discovery Boards, which are used to visualize data so that users
   better understand financials data and identify patterns and insights. Discovery
   Boards are available to early adopters. People Analytics uses augmented
   analytics to continuously look at patterns across huge data sets to find trends
   and ranks. People Analytics is available to early adopters, with general
   availability anticipated for 2020.
9. Workday’s Aneel Bhusri
   emphasized higher education and its strength as one of the company’s
   four strategic verticals. Enhancements to Workday Student continue with
   stackable programs of study, stackable credentials, competencies skills, financial
   aid, and more.
10. Workday is changing its version
    number nomenclature starting in 2020. Releases will be identified by year
    and release number (e.g., 2020R1, 2020R2).

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