Oracle’s annual conference in Las Vegas, which drew more than 20,000 delegates this week, changed its name from Cloud World in 2024 to AI World in 2025, encapsulating the new focal point of business technology.
Generative AI dominated the stage, with new use cases in applications, infrastructure and data. However, the message threaded through every session was that none of this was possible without cloud computing.
For South African enterprises, cloud still remains the target of IT strategy. Old Mutual, which chose Oracle to underpin its move to the cloud, is a powerful illustration of the priorities of South African enterprises.
"Old Mutual has been a very early and fairly aggressive adopter of cloud — we’re an almost 100% cloud organisation now," Old Mutual group CIO Dhesen Ramsamy told Business Times ahead of the event.
"We completed the bulk of our migration in 2023. What set us apart was strong leadership and top-down sponsorship from our board and our group executives. There was an understanding about the benefits we were reaping, which ensured we got the focus, that there was speed, and we got a great execution of our cloud migration."
That migration placed Old Mutual ahead of the curve on a continent where many enterprises are still weighing their options. "Many firms are still on the consideration path, and we’ve already unlocked a lot of benefits from agility and infrastructure reliability.
"Our next huge focus now is on cost efficiencies on cloud and continuing the cloud-first approach towards innovation and new product build."
Financial services drive AI adoption
Oracle CEO Mike Sicilia said in the opening address of the conference that financial services were at the front line of adoption.
"Banks, insurers, capital markets firms — they all run on data. And what they want is not AI for its own sake, but AI that delivers faster reporting, better risk management and stronger compliance. Embedding that directly into financial services applications is where we’re seeing the most traction."
Our customers are already using AI to close their books faster, to recruit better, to manage supply chains more effectively. These are real business outcomes happening today, not experiments.
Steve Miranda, Oracle executive vice-president for applications development, said in a media briefing that financial leaders were demanding measurable value.
"Our customers are already using AI to close their books faster, to recruit better, to manage supply chains more effectively. These are real business outcomes happening today, not experiments."
Richard Smith, Oracle executive vice-president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), told Business Times that Oracle’s African strategy went well beyond South Africa.
"We are seeing an acceleration of cloud adoption in markets across Africa. It is not just South Africa; demand is coming from East Africa, West Africa, and North Africa, too. The need is the same: resilient infrastructure, secure systems and a partner that will stay the course."
Readiness through cloud resilience
Cormac Watters, Oracle vice-president for applications in the EMEA region, said Africa was a market in motion.
"There are still many, many companies that want general AI. They don’t know what it is, but they want it. So they need to make sure they are on a platform that, if something seismic happens, they can turn it on. That is the state of mind right now."
Cloud was key to this readiness, said Ramsamy. Resistance was inevitable, but concerns over cost and disruption were eased with transparency. "We showed a lot of quick wins, and with the execution of the migration, there was minimal disruption. You get a lot of buy-in and business trust that way."
The overhaul of enterprise systems tested that trust. "Our ERP [enterprise resource planning] deployment, we did face some challenges, and it required a lot of intensive support... But the real impact came once we stabilised that, and that was in partnership with Oracle. We were able to unlock more reliable financial reporting and operational efficiency."
Having secured that foundation, Ramsamy and his team are now turning to AI. "Like many organisations, we’re in the early stages of our AI journey. Our leadership is very committed to embedding AI into our operating model.
"We’ve focused on real business use cases, not just experimentation. Over the next few years, AI will shift from pilot programmes to mainstream applications that will drive efficiency, better insights for the business, and customer value ultimately."
For Oracle, the finance sector is the proving ground. If banks and insurers achieve faster reporting, stronger compliance, and meaningful AI-driven insights, the wider market is likely to follow.
• Goldstuck is CEO of World Wide Worx, editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za, and author of ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI – The African Edge’.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.