By Sourabh Kulesh

New Delhi, Feb 24 (IANS): When it comes to Big Data and Analytics, Indian enterprises are adopting the technologies to improve operations and enhance customer experience at a greater pace than the rest of the Asia-Pacific (APAC) countries, a senior executive from Cloud major Oracle has said.

When it comes to the Next-Gen trends in the Big Data space, adoption, customer interaction and operational excellence are growing rapidly among Indian enterprises.

"India is the leader in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education; so the companies are well prepared with the staff and the kind of talent needed to leverage Big Data and Analytics. There are a lot of opportunities that the country still needs to explore to make value out of Big Data," Jeff Olson, Head of Big Data and Analytics, Oracle APAC, told IANS in an interview.

"I see rapid adoption of Cloud in the country. The ability to try new ideas and to give staff and employees opportunities to innovate and use big data insights is a huge trend today," Olson added.

According to a survey conducted by the market research firm Longitude Research, along with Oracle and chip-maker Intel, the Cloud strategies of 43 per cent of Indian businesses are fully implemented and working.

The survey added that an emerging group of businesses that have 70 per cent or more of their applications in the Cloud are outperforming their competitors globally.

Businesses in India are now looking to capitalise on new and innovative technologies, such as open source, multi-platform capabilities and visual tools in the next year.

Nearly a quarter (23 per cent) of IT executives from India felt that automation capabilities were important to the business and a fifth underlined the importance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) within the organisation, the survey noted.

"The advantages and flexibility with Cloud computing, particularly with Oracle, is very attractive to businesses and the momentum on Cloud is very large," the executive noted.

According to Olson, ML, AI and Big Data Analytics will become intrinsic to every point in an organisation to make it future-ready.

Oracle is helping enterprises in creating the mindset and helping them develop capabilities to innovate.

According to the company, Indian businesses are now comfortably adopting Cloud Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions and have realised that these solutions are scalable, agile and secure.

As per market research firm Gartner, SaaS will be the biggest Cloud market and will double to $75 billion by 2020 globally. In India, the SaaS business grew at the rate of 33 per cent (year-on-year) in 2017.

Speaking on the industries that will leverage the power of Big Data Analytics in the future, Olson said enterprises with retail focus and large transaction volumes are more likely to adapt to the situation.

"Telcos, Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) sector, and retail with huge customer-driven analytics focus, along with manufacturing and supply-chain heavy industries, will have a huge opportunity in analytics," Olson added.

Olson said that Oracle has several customers in the APAC region who have been successful because they delved into the Big Data Analytics space and innovations are coming to them at a rapid pace.

"We are in a phase where things are changing very fast. The ability to change, to adapt, to innovate and to fuel that entrepreneurial spirit into your business has added a lot of extra values to the world. Oracle's products are now helping businesses to adopt, innovate and drive values," the executive said.