Reinforcing its commitment to South Africa, Oracle today announced the opening of an Innovation Hub in Johannesburg, a first for Oracle in Africa that will help drive the adoption of emerging technologies across the country’s corporates, public sector and academia.
In line with South Africa’s National Development Plan (NDP) 2030, Oracle’s Innovation Hub is aimed at furthering digital transformation in South Africa by raising awareness about the impact of emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Bots and Machine Learning (ML) to help drive economic growth and support the delivery of innovative and transparent services to citizens and customers alike.
The new hub will act as a platform for Oracle customers, partners and other stakeholders to better understand the potential of emerging technologies and co-create industry specific innovations with top Oracle experts.
“There is now widespread recognition that a digital revolution is an imperative for South Africa’s socio economic growth; including by the Honourable President Cyril Ramaphosa”, said Niral Patel, Managing Director and Technology Leader, Oracle South Africa. “As a leading cloud solutions company, we are focused on supporting South Africa’s public and private sector drive impactful transformation with latest digital technologies. Oracle’s new innovation hub in Johannesburg will act as a catalyst to help drive awareness, experimentation and implementation of transformational initiatives that will be customised to address local challenges and create new opportunities.”
“Forrester predicts that businesses that leverage Artificial Intelligence, big data and the Internet of Things (IoT) to uncover new business insights will outperform less informed peers by $1.2 trillion per annum by 2020. Oracle research also shows an increasing interest in Artificial Intelligence capabilities, with nearly a third (29 per cent) of cloud users citing the inclusion of Artificial Intelligence as a key requirement of cloud”.
“However making Artificial Intelligence easy to adopt is critical – a key challenge for organizations is that they can’t afford to wait. The Oracle Innovation Hub will aim to address this challenge by engaging with key South African audiences by raising their awareness levels, helping drive an innovative approach and also supporting the skills development of next generation of African leaders”, added Derek Bose, Senior Applications Directors for South Africa and the SADC regional cluster at Oracle.
Oracle’s Innovation Hub is based at the company´s Johannesburg office and will relocate to the new state of the art Oracle building that is currently being built, and expected to be ready mid- 2019. In keeping with the theme of innovation, the new building is all about ‘right sizing’ the space to empower the way that the world is moving, towards a mobile workforce, with open spaces to facilitate collaboration and carefully controlled light and sound levels for increased productivity. The building will also have a 4-star green rating.
“Oracle has been present in South Africa for nearly 30 years, and we have consistently invested in driving skills development and empowering local communities. The Oracle Ponelopele Secondary School in Johannesburg, which has now been delivering quality education free of cost to South African students for more than 10 years is a stellar example of this commitment. The new innovation hub is yet another initiative by Oracle to support skills development and further the country’s digital economy”, concludes Patel.
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