Apps Associates Research Reveals Vast Majority (94%) of Oracle It Decision Makers Haven’t Maximized Their Applications in the Cloud

Findings Uncover Application Optimization Trends Among Oracle Customers; Including Best Practices for Engaging a Managed Services Provider

Apps Associates, an expert cloud migration and managed services provider, shared the findings of its report analyzing the top trends and focus areas within the Oracle application landscape. The survey, titled “Advanced Guide for Oracle Application Management: 2020 Optimization Trends and Recommendations,” reveals IT professionals’ perceptions around their most significant IT and business challenges in the cloud. The research also examines the evolving role of the managed services provider (MSP).

.@AppsAssociates today shared the findings of its report analyzing the top trends and focus areas within the #Oracle application landscape

Apps Associates’ report includes insight from 300+ IT decision makers (ITDMs) who use Oracle for their primary business applications. These professionals all work for established companies, categorized as between $100 million and $5 billion in annual revenue. Almost three-fourths (73%) of those surveyed reported that they are the main IT decision maker within their company.

The results of the survey from this group of ITDMs revealed continued widespread interest and activity in cloud migration. More than one-third of ITDMs (37%) indicate they have already migrated their entire suite of Oracle business applications to the cloud, and almost three out of five (57%) are in the process of migrating. An additional five percent are planning on migrating in the near future, and only one percent of ITDMs do not plan to migrate any aspect of their technology stack off-premise in 2020.

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“In this newly complex environment, CIOs and other ITDMs are under considerable pressure to maximize cloud computing ROI and lower overall total cost of ownership (TCO),” said Adrian King, CEO of Apps Associates. “Facing competing priorities, most ITDMs are aiming to maximize their return on Oracle investments and are now looking to pivot to a more data-driven approach, reliant on ongoing diagnostics, analytics technologies, and assistance from MSPs.”

As ITDMs look to optimize their applications to generate the most value from their technology stack, Apps Associates research uncovered the following trends:

• Increased Demand for Diagnostics and Business Intelligence: Efficiently scaling business operations with the requisite speed and accuracy requires a data feed that only advanced diagnostics and analytics can provide. In fact, the data shows that more than two out of five ITDMs (44%) say that analyzing and reporting on business intelligence and analytics data is one of their technology team’s greatest challenges. ITDMs and business leaders alike are demanding enhanced capabilities in this area in 2020. When asked what innovations ITDMs want to see from Oracle in the next year, more automation and analysis of real-time business intelligence and analytics was the most popular answer.
• Modern MSP Partnerships Drive Business Imperatives: The data revealed that MSPs are well beyond helping IT departments manage the classic “break-fix” cycles. The emerging reality is that partnering with an MSP can resolve the lingering concerns around moving Oracle business applications to the cloud.
  • Almost nine out of ten respondents indicate an MSP partnership would help them better secure the enterprise (86%), improve cloud consumption (86%), and position the IT team to focus more on critical corporate initiatives (86%). There are other essential capabilities an MSP brings to bear as well. More than four out of five respondents say an MSP could help the organization reduce TCO (84%), aid in the successful migration to the cloud (84%) and simplify the complexity of a hybrid/multi-cloud environment (83%).
  • ITDMs who confirmed their company had never worked with an MSP were much more likely to report staffing problems, with seven out of ten (73%) responding that their IT team was either not fully staffed or had experienced staffing issues. In comparison, among enterprises who use an MSP, only two out of ten (20%) report staffing challenges.
• Security Remains the Biggest Hurdle in the Cloud: When asked about the business factors preventing ITDMs from getting maximum value out of their Oracle applications, the most popular response was security update complexity (46%). Three out of five (60%) ITDMs say their company has made IT projects aligned with security their top priority.

“Cloud migration can easily lead to overspending and cloud sprawl, so for many enterprises, post-migration is where the real challenges begin,” said Leslie Briand, Vice President, Application Managed Services, at Apps Associates. “An experienced MSP with established strategic partnerships and competencies can ensure a smooth cloud transition to create a solution that extracts maximum business value.”

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While security emerged as the most critical and frequently voiced concern from ITDMs, it is certainly not alone. ITDMs identified other critical business factors they need assistance with, including rising licensing costs (41%) and licensing compliance (39%). Nearly one-third (29%) say the business factor preventing them from getting maximum value from their Oracle applications is release management uncertainty, while almost the same percentage (28%) say there is uncertainty around deploying new functionality.

ITDMs need more guidance around licensing and compliance and are looking to partner with MSPs to enhance their relationship with Oracle. A great majority of ITDMs (80%) believe an Oracle audit is likely, and that having an MSP positioned alongside their organization could help with negotiating more favorable terms with Oracle (82%).

“While many ITDMs leveraging Oracle enterprise applications believe they are required to follow Oracle’s defined roadmap, enterprises have more flexibility than they may realize,” said Bill Saltys, Senior Vice President, Alliances at Apps Associates. “Amazon Web Services (AWS) is considered an authorized cloud environment, and many Apps Associates’ customers that are heavily invested in Oracle business applications have successfully migrated their traditional Oracle workloads to AWS. These companies have since benefited from enhanced flexibility, agility and security, while lowering TCO and enabling innovation not previously possible on-premise, or with other cloud options.”

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