Last month, Oracle announced a new Enterprise Communications Platform (ECP).
The platform serves up SaaS-based communication, network, and IoT solutions to customers so they can innovate within their Oracle environments.
By that description, it's essentially a CPaaS platform. And, as the saying goes, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it probably is a duck.
Yet, don't expect Oracle to go to market with the ECP as a standalone offering and compete directly against Twilio, Vonage, and Webex for CPaaS contract wins.
Instead, the solution will likely target Oracle customers who wish to customize their cloud or add cloud capabilities to their on-premise deployments.
Liz Miller, VP & Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, noted this during a recent BIG CX News Update and highlighted how the move meets the needs of many current Oracle customers. She said:
What Oracle is providing their customers is the capacity to build what is needed as opposed to building what Oracle built.
"I think that's indicative of Oracle's new kind of mantra moving into that cloud, that hyper-scaler world, where they want things to be far more flexible," she continued.
"But, they want it to fit back into where their customers stand today from within their cloud and cloud infrastructure."
That's crucial, as today's Oracle customers are unlikely to leverage just one element of its portfolio. Instead, these brands will likely run their finance, supply chain, HR, and various other functions on Oracle's infrastructure.
The ECP helps pull these elements together so they can talk to one another and share data, enabling new possibilities for customization and innovation.
A Mindset Shift at Oracle?
As Miller suggests, the ECP announcement perhaps highlights Oracle’s recognition that shifting to the cloud has not necessarily proven easy for many businesses.
