The Cloud is one of the cornerstones of the digitization process, with the name of Industry 4.0, the Italian manufacturing world is ...
The Cloud is one of the cornerstones of the digitization process, with the name of Industry 4.0, the Italian manufacturing world is going to face. This term, which is now in common parlance, is commonly associated with the concept of "shared storage." But in the professional world, and even more in industry, the word takes on a different meaning: a meaning that goes beyond the admittedly important aspect of access to "resources" to be declined in remote physical senses much linked to the idea of "service" . To deepen these themes we met on the sidelines of the Connected Manufacturing Forum in Milan, Alessandro Evangelisti, Finance & Supply Chain Cloud Evangelist at Oracle for Southern Europe. We asked him to start, what it means to use the Cloud in the industrial context. "The Cloud is first and foremost a system that allows companies to benefit from a set of information services with a high rate of innovation. We are talking about services for the execution of which is requested resources - computational capabilities, hardware and software - to which such companies may have access independently, "explains Evangelists. "Use in Cloud services, then, it is a way to break free from the worry of investing in hardware and software, however, keeping up with the times. Oracle expertise, which supports companies in their path digitization since when there is digital data, is the guarantee of the fact that the 'set' of hardware, software and services oriented to the data management, we provide companies with our offer Cloud, are adequate for the purpose for which companies want to use them. "
Dominate and manage big data
The Cloud is a simple, affordable way to collect in a single repository the huge amount of data generated during the production process and to proceed through residents solutions of the same cloud, a processing that transforms this data into process support information decision-making. "Today the Cloud enables companies to optimize their supply chain in all its stages: from concept and product design to the procurement of materials, the manufacturing process to the stage of shipment and delivery to the warehouse management. With access to a single platform, which does not require capital investment, you can optimize these processes with great ease and without integration efforts that were previously needed to talk to each other heterogeneous systems: the data it they are already living in a unique environment, which handles the communication synchronously to the different functions, without the need to manage complex transitions ".
But in what stages you will have the impact faster and with the best return on investment? "The advantage of the cloud is that by its very nature is in fact a huge repository of information to which to connect applications and services in a fast and simple software, according to specific needs. Where to begin naturally depends on the maturity of the company and the market in which it operates. For example, for companies that have already switched to e-commerce strategies may make sense to start from the delivery phase, where digitization can help you implement the unique strategies that take into account all distribution channels. Where the market is more competitive, however, it may be worthwhile to begin the digitization of the product design and integrate with marketing to reduce time-to-market ".
The word 'connect' well makes the networking aspect enabled by the Cloud: with this approach it is possible to extend the data collection (and access) also upstream and downstream supply chain. "If you decide to offer access to the platform to a supplier, they bring in the platform all the details of its product, enriching information assets. Same thing can be done by placing the data in the cloud of use of the product by the customer: a method, for example, to provide services to asset optimization and predictive maintenance. "
The potential applications are enormous and only the imagination can limit them. "Our services are highly innovative and integrate the most advanced computer innovations in our offer includes advanced social collaboration tools accessible on any device (including wearable), but also analytical tools that can handle millions of data for machine learning ". And Oracle is also able to pool the many data residing on their own infrastructure, transforming the experiences of its customers in the know how of the system whose benefits are extended to all. Even SMEs. "The cloud is a technology in a sense 'democratic' that does not require capital investment, it does not build barriers to entry of new players in the market. On the contrary, it offers a flexibility that makes the cost for its use really proportional use: you pay for the computational units that are used or to registered users, so for an SME costs are definitely lower than for a large company " .
Oracle's response
These issues will be discussed on November 14 in Milan during the Oracle Cloud Day - Moving Forward, a fully dedicated to discovering the Cloud day even through the presentation of interesting case studies, including those of the Amplifon, Telecom Italy, Moneyfarm, Sirti and Assicurazioni Generali.
