Oleg Zhukov: Oracle Sees Big Potential in Georgia
The business conference ‘Oracle Day in Georgia’ took place in Tbilisi on February 21. The main goal of the event was to introduce Oracle’s state-of-the-art digital technologies and expertise to Georgian IT leaders; in particular, how to optimize business processes using Oracle's innovative cloud technologies.
Oleg Zhukov, Oracle Cluster Leader for Russia, Kazakhstan, Central Asia and the Caucasus, opened the business conference. Company representatives and invited experts presented new technologies and innovative IT solutions to Georgian specialists. They also discussed cloud technology and shared ready recipes that will help to adapt to the digital era of business, reduce costs and update IT infrastructure.
The agenda of ‘Oracle Day in Georgia’ included such important topics as cloud technologies, cyber security and Oracle Information security solutions, Oracle Analytics Cloud: a single platform for Business Intelligence and Data Discovery, smart chatbots, Modern Data Warehouses on Oracle Engineered Systems, new features of Oracle’s database 18c and the new DBMS focus – Autonomous Database, and more.
GEORGIA TODAY spoke to Zhukov to find out more about ‘Oracle Day in Georgia’ and Georgia’s potential in technologies.
How profitable for Oracle is the Georgian market in these directions?
Every year, we organize an event at the Oracle headquarters in San Francisco, where we invite our customers and partners from all over the world. After that, we hold similar events everywhere we have representatives. In Georgia we had Oracle Day because we see a huge potential for business development here.
Accordingly, Georgia is our so-called “focus” country. This year, all my teams are both technically and organizationally focused on Georgia, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan. In these countries, Oracle business and development opportunities are quite large, and we see our customers’ attitude to our technologies, namely, how quickly our IT technologies are being adopted by Georgian businesses and also by the public sector. Georgian banks and telecom operators have several years’ experience working with us.
How valuable are your products for state structures?
State structures in Georgia are actively developing and are interested in our products. The main direction that we offer to the Georgian market is cloud technologies. Interest is mainly directed at optimizing costs for all initiatives, if companies start to collaborate with Oracle as a cloud provider. We also assist in the development of software and Engineered Systems. Cloud is the main priority. Oracle is the fastest growing cloud company at scale.
What challenges does Cloud respond to and how does it help businesses to combat cyber-attacks?
Cloud is a market where all kinds of data are secured, vitally important nowadays. For a large amount of information, we can use additional analytical software to analyze data related to the specific topic and suggest future decisions. Cloud is able to predetermine certain types of hazards and avoid them. Another direction we have, and which is “future,” is the creation of large software products that eliminate human errors by using new generation algorithms and artificial intelligence to see the current errors and exclude them in future. All these tools are already built into our database. Oracle Autonomous Database Cloud is self-driving, self-securing and self-repairing. Speaking about Georgia, I would like to note that the country is very modern and is not afraid to adopt new technologies because they care about making things safer.
What are the latest trends in business information technology, by which we mean Oracle intellectual chat-bots, artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud services, predictive analytics and so on?
What was just recently only an intriguing trend is now a reality and a new imperative in business management. What is the Oracle Intellectual Chat-Bot? It can communicate by text as well as by sound. It analyzes and interacts with you in a familiar language.
And how do you assess the market in Georgia?
We have wonderful partners and customers in Georgia. They are eager to use new technologies and they are trying to learn more about them, because they are concerned about costs, optimization of business processes and the reduction of bureaucracy. Oracle sees quite a significant potential in Georgia, which, for sure, we’ll be developing.