Interview: Cloud computing is future

NAIROBI, KENYA: Over the past decade, digitisation of government services and payments in Kenya has had mixed success.

While State departments such as the National Transport and Safety Authority and immigration have saved billions by digitising payments through eCitizen, for example, challenges like downtimes, capacity constraints and change resistance have dampened the process.

Financial Standard spoke to Oracle’s Senior Vice President for East Central Europe-Middle East & Africa Arun Khehar to discuss these and other trends shaping Africa’s digitisation journey.

What are some of the trends we are seeing in cloud computing and how prepared is the region and, Kenya in particular, to adapt to these changes?

Africa is growing rapidly and we are seeing this in the changing patterns of overall demand.   We’ve operated on the continent for more than 40 years and today. Africa is hungry for connectivity and networked solutions.   We’ve had to double our labour resources in the region for example in order to satisfy the demand from our clients who are also spreading their operations across the region. The adoption has been across the board and the benefits of cost savings and leaner operations are becoming more apparent to both large and small businesses across the region.

How is this demand structured and what role do you see Oracle playing in this shifting business environment?

Africa has had the benefit of leapfrogging several technologies that are almost obsolete but that the developed world had to evolve through. This makes the learning curve steeper for some of these technologies such as mobile and fibre and we are seeing our clients in both the private and public sectors taking it in stride and running with it. In some areas of course, the private sector is faster to adopt than the public sector but in majority of the countries demand is evident across both sectors.  At the same, time clients are becoming more specific in what they want and service providers today have to go the extra mile to provide tailor-made solutions for their discerning clients.    Many companies today are running large digital strategies with a skeletal staff and little or no hardware in their premises as they now opt for a cloud infrastructure provider like us to handle it all.

How does this play out in Kenya and what new growth opportunities are you looking at to expand your local footprint?

Oracle has been the solutions provider for several high profile clients in Kenya including several commercial banks, Kenya Airways, the Kenya Revenue Authority, among others. We provide both front and back-end solutions for these clients and our goal is to grow with them.  This means if they are opening new branches in the region or increasing their digital infrastructure we are beside them catering to the emerging needs.    Clients in Kenya, like in most parts of the region today are asking for faster connectivity and looking to make their operational costs lower. This also frees up more resources to go towards the company’s core business functions.   We also see an opportunity for the 47 counties to follow in the example of the central government and ministries to digitise more of their services and make life easier for the county administration and residents.

Does this imply oracle will be expanding its operations in the country and is that the nature of your current visit?

At the moment, we plan to continue working with the clients we have and ensuring we provide timely and efficient support.    To this end, I have been accompanied by several of our key support staff who will also be engaging our big clients in the region on some of their current needs. We are also banking on the setting up of our new research lab in Dubai that will serve the region including Kenya.   From this lab, we will invite developers interested in making third-party solutions for artificial intelligence (AI) on Oracle’s platform.   AI is one of the areas where we expect to see a lot of investment and interest in the coming years. 

We are also keen to work with more smaller businesses to move to the cloud. Solutions like NetSuite are tailor made to fit the operations of smaller companies and can be easily scalable as the company grows larger.